


Metanoia

by XILVerify



Series: Things That Go Bump [2]
Category: Gugudan (Band), K-pop, VERIVERY (Band), VIXX
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Developing Friendships, Everyone Needs A Hug, Families of Choice, Gen, Mythology References, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Female/Female Relationships, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Male/Male Relationships, Platonic Relationships, Social Commentary, Unconventional Families, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-10-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26389486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XILVerify/pseuds/XILVerify
Summary: Metanoia: (n) The journey of changing one's mind, heart, self, or way of life.After finding an unexpected home with an eclectic family of monsters and humans, one would think Hoyoung's problems have all but disappeared. Instead, he finds himself struggling to truly find his place and purpose within this strange, new environment. He's not the only one, however, as some new faces are soon to appear in the lives of the inhabitants of Jellyfish Cottage, and in the process of helping them find their place, Hoyoung may find his.(Or: the sequel to the urban fantasy Jellyfish family AU that multiple people asked for, so here it is, finally.)
Series: Things That Go Bump [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1915069
Comments: 46
Kudos: 50





	1. Mind

**Author's Note:**

> So this thing was originally supposed to be a oneshot, but after the outline turned out to be more than 6000 words long, I figured I may as well chop it up into parts both to keep myself motivated and to make sure y'all are getting some content. A lot has happened in the six months since the first installment of this AU was posted, as well, not the least which has been me becoming _very_ disillusioned with Jellyfish Entertainment as a company. Personally, I would prefer if VIXX, Gugudan, and Verivery all packed up and moved to Groovl1n, but since all three groups are still under Jellyfish for the time being, the Jellyfish fam they will remain for the purposes of this AU.
> 
> If you're new to this AU, I would highly recommend checking out the first installment before reading this one, as it's all setup for what happens here.

“Hey! Hey, sleepyhead! Wake up, it’s almost time for dinner!”

Hoyoung cracked an eye open. Nayoung’s nose was inches from his own, her green eyes twinkling with excitement. He groaned and covered his face with his bandaged paws. “Five more minutes, Nayoung.”

“Nope!” The larger nekomata nudged him insistently with her paws and nose until he finally uncurled from his little nest with a defeated groan. “You sleep too much as it is, little guy, up and at ‘em!”

“I’m up, I’m up,” he groaned, rolling onto his front, stretching, and following Nayoung out from under Kangmin’s bed. Taekwoon was already under the couch by the time they arrived, and he nuzzled both young monsters as they took up positions on either side of him.

“I think you’re gaining a little weight, Hoyoung,” he said approvingly in his soft, airy voice. He nosed at the healing slashes on Hoyoung’s flank. “These seem to be healing well, too.”

“Yes, hyung, I feel better every day,” Hoyoung replied bashfully, still unused to being fussed over so much. “Not having to travel every day is helping, I think. I’m just-” He yawned again, “-tired all the time now, for some reason.”

Taekwoon nodded sagely. “That’s to be expected. I think a nap after the meal would do you some good.”

“He’s done nothing for the past few days _but_ sleep, oppa,” Nayoung protested. “When are you gonna start acting like a proper active kitten, huh?” She reached around Taekwoon and prodded Hoyoung playfully in the side. He pounced on her in retaliation.

As the two rolled around under the couch, Taekwoon watched them indulgently. “He’s been through a lot, Nayoung. Now that he’s not in survival mode, his body can properly focus on healing itself, and that takes a lot of energy. It’s going to take him awhile to get back to normal.” He reached out a large, black paw and patted Hoyoung on the head as Nayoung pinned him to the floor and sat on him. “But that’s okay. There’s no rush.”

“Thanks, hyung,” Hoyoung wheezed, batting feebly at Nayoung and shooting the oldest nekomata a pleading look. “Little help, please? She’s squashing me.”

“Are you calling me fat, Hoyoungie?” Nayoung said, leaning on him even more heavily just as a key scraped in the lock of the front door. They all scrambled back into position just as the door opened, letting in Mina and Kangmin. The two youngest humans retreated into their rooms to change, and then headed outside to work in Yongseung’s garden. Sometime later, Minchan also came home and started pulling four packages of cheap, instant noodle soups out of a cabinet. Hana must be at the “nightclub” tonight again, then. Sanghyuk had only been home for dinner once since Hoyoung’s first night there, since he spent so much time at school, so the fourth instant noodle had to be for Hakyeon.

As Minchan went about filling the rice cooker and cutting up some green onions and ham to add to the soups along with some apples on the side, Mina and Kangmin came racing back into the house, each trying to get to the bathroom first despite Minchan’s yelled protests that they were getting dirt all over the floor (Hoyoung could just imagine the faces Hongbin was pulling in the broom closet right then). Kangmin ended up getting to the bathroom first, slamming the door in his sister’s face with a triumphant “HA!” Mina pounded on the door a few times, yelling that he’d better not use up all the hot water, before retreating to her room in defeat.

Once order had been restored, baths taken, and the floor swept, the sun had gone completely down. The three kids gathered around the table, poured the water for their noodles, and chatted among themselves while they waited for them to cook. Despite their lively chatter, they gave off less positive emotion than usual, and Hoyoung’s heart sank. Hakyeon hadn’t returned home from his job until after Kangmin had gone to bed once, and it had been slim pickings for the three nekomata that night.

Fortunately, Hakyeon showed up soon after the kids began to dig into their noodles. Kangmin immediately flew to greet him and zeroed in on the small plastic bag his eldest brother held. “What’s that, hyung? Did you bring us something? Did you, did you?”

“Indeed I did,” Hakyeon replied, smiling his fondest smile and dropping little salmon-colored curlicues of affection everywhere. “Who wants fried chicken?” The subsequent shrieked chorus of “meeeeeee!” had Hoyoung clapping his paws over his ears and wondering how three juvenile humans could possibly make _this_ much noise. 

After everyone had gotten their food and resumed or started eating, Mina piped up, fiddling distractedly with the number of beaded and woven bracelets she wore around both wrists. “Hakyeon-oppa?” After he looked in her direction, she took a deep breath and spoke very fast: “So I was sharpening my pencil in drama class today, and I noticed a script hidden under some folders on the teacher’s desk for a play called Memoirs of a Ninja, so I’m pretty sure that’s going to be our end of June production, and I looked it up, and there’s a leading part that I think would suit me _perfectly_ , it would be my big break! The only problem is, Teacher Han would probably give the part to Lee Chaeyoung; she’s the prettiest, most fashionable girl in the drama class and a year ahead of me, and she _always_ gets the leading lady parts.”  
  


“Wait, would that be the girl in my homeroom who always has those really long fake nails and so many phone charms that it could be used as a cat-o’-nine-tails?” Minchan cut in through a mouthful of chicken.

“That would be her,” Mina said sourly. Turning back to Hakyeon, she continued, “I need to give myself an edge if I want to get that part, and I think I found it. So there’s this kid in my class that knows some taekwondo, and if he can teach me some moves, I’ll be _sure_ to land the part when we have auditions. The only problem is… well, I kind of need to offer something in return. Equivalent exchange, you know? So, I was thinking… could Minchan maybe give him voice lessons a few times a week for a couple weeks?”

Minchan choked on his bite of rice. Kangmin got up and helpfully pounded him on the back as he sputtered, “Mina, just because I took a couple years of voice lessons back with mom doesn’t mean I’m qualified to teach someone myse- ow! You can stop hitting me now, Kangmin!”

“Why not?” she protested as Kangmin fled back to his seat, giggling. “You were _good_ , and I know you remember everything, judging from the concerts you put on in the shower.” Minchan’s face turned an interesting shade of red, though it was unclear whether it was from embarrassment or the choking. “I’ll take over your laundry duties until all the lessons are over. Pleeeeease, oppa? This is _really_ important to me, and it’s just for a few weeks!” 

This gave Minchan pause. “…Alright, _fine_. But only on days I don’t have babysitting jobs, got it?”

“Yay!” Mina flung her hands in the air, and the piece of ham held in her chopsticks almost went flying. “Thank you, oppa! Give me your schedule, and I’ll work something out with my classmate tomorrow. As long as it’s alright with Hakyeon-oppa,” she added diffidently, turning to the eldest sibling, who’d been watching the proceedings with his lips pressed tightly together, amusement bubbles pouring off him in waves.

“Well, if you’re careful, I don’t see why not, but are you sure you want to bring him all the way here? You could practice at school, you know.”

“And get everyone gossiping about why I’m suddenly hanging out so much with Jo Gyehyeon, of all people? I think _not_!” She tossed her head dramatically. “This needs to be a secret if I’m going to have any kind of advantage in the auditions. Besides, how is Minchan supposed to give him voice lessons, otherwise? He already has that old piano and everything, it’s a perfect setup! Just don’t get underfoot while he’s here, okay, Kangmin? Be on your best behavior, or _else_.”

“Or else what, noona?” Kangmin asked, all wide-eyed innocence.

“Or else the monster under your bed will eat you, and no one will ever find your remains.”

“It wouldn’t do that!” Kangmin protested, indignant. “It’s a _nice_ monster. It ate my snack, didn’t it?”

“ _Speaking_ of never finding the remains,” Minchan interrupted, clearly trying to avert a quarrel. “Did you guys hear? A family went missing last night! Everyone was talking about it at school today. Entire family, just boom, up and vanished. Apparently the police only found out because one of the kids had a neighbor friend over, and the friend’s parents called the cops when their kid didn’t come home. They lived in a really poor area and the parents were out of work, no one would have known they were gone, otherwise.”

“They disappeared?” Kangmin whimpered, eyes wide with fright now. “Just like that?”

“Were they anyone we would know?” Mina asked, leaning forward in interest. “How many people disappeared?”

“No, I don’t think so. Family name was Gong, I think, and six people in total went missing.”

“S-six?” Kangmin whispered, seeming to shrink in on himself. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where his train of thought was going. 

“Minchan, what have we said about discussing current events at the table?” Hakyeon said sternly. As the teen muttered an apology and Hakyeon gave Kangmin a reassuring pat on the shoulder, he said, “So, Mina, what’s your friend like? Gyehyeon, was it?”

“Well, he’s not my _friend_ , exactly,” Mina shrugged. “But we get along okay. He doesn’t really… talk to people very much, but he’s nice enough, I guess. He gets picked on a lot for being from the Little Treasures Children’s Home, though. Actually, that’s how I found out he knows martial arts. I’d left my pencil case on the bleachers during recess, and when I went back to get it after school, I saw he’d been jumped by some of the other boys from class. He gave one a bloody nose and tossed another one into the trashcans, it was _super_ cool. He was the first person I thought of when I came up with my plan.”

Hakyeon had stopped chewing as Mina spoke, and an unidentifiable look passed over his face before it was gone. “Well, as long as he gets permission, I don’t see any reason why he can’t come over. Just be careful, okay? We can’t afford an unscheduled dentist or doctor’s appointment.”

“We’ll be very careful, oppa,” Mina promised, nodding so hard it looked like she might give herself whiplash. 

The conversation then turned to other things, and the meal concluded soon after. Everyone helped clear the table and wash the dishes, and then the younger three adjourned to their own rooms to do their homework while Hakyeon hauled his box of candle making supplies out of his room to make another batch. Apparently, he sold them to various bath and body shops in the city every couple weeks to help bring in more money. As much as he wanted to watch the process, Hoyoung was pleasantly drowsy from his full stomach, and doubted he would be able to stay awake for much longer. After bidding Taekwoon and Nayoung goodnight, he followed Minchan and Kangmin into their room for a nice, long nap.

Camouflage still active, he slipped through the cracked-open door and ducked under Minchan’s bed directly to his right. Hugging the wall and dodging various boxes, toys, and dust bunnies, he traveled under Minchan’s bed, to the nightstand separating the beds, to Kangmin’s bed, to the little nest he’d compiled from stray socks and a ragged hoodie in the farthest corner of the room. After making sure his nest was in proper order and nosing some socks into position, Hoyoung curled up with a content sigh. His movement dislodged a small, square piece of iridescent silver foil from where he’d stashed it in the folds of the hoodie after consuming the piece of candy folded inside a few days ago. The words “Never give up. Tomorrow will be better!” were printed on the inside. The encouraging phrase cheered him up whenever he looked at it, which was why he hadn’t discarded it by now. Well… that, and Kangmin gave it to him. He hadn’t had any kind of possession since his younger sister gave him a tiny teddy bear filched from a discarded flower arrangement at the hospital he used to live at, keeping its twin for herself. He’d taken it with him when he left home, but it had burned to a crisp in the conflagration that had destroyed Hyeyeon’s ice cream stand.

The thought of his siblings, of the warm cuddle piles they’d always slept in back in the hospital, of his parents, of his mother’s stern but heartbroken face as she and his father sent them all away to make room for their new litter, sent a pang of acute loneliness through Hoyoung’s heart, and he abruptly had to fight back tears. He always deliberately tried to not think of them much, but sometimes the isolation just became more than he could bear. He hoped his siblings been able to do at least as well for themselves as he had, that his parents weren’t lonely, that maybe they’d all be able to meet again someday, as unlikely as that probably was. He curled up in a tight ball, tucked his nose under his tail, and did his best to ignore the old ache in his chest until sleep finally dragged him under.

* * *

“Psst! Hoyoung! Hoyoung, wake up!

Shaking off the annoying sensation of déjà vu, Hoyoung cracked open one eye. “What _is_ it, Nayoung?”

“Mina’s bringing her friend over today, I heard her talking about it at breakfast. I know you need your sleep, but didn’t you say you reeeeeeally wanted to watch last night?” Nayoung pranced as much as she could in the enclosed space under the bed.

Hoyoung perked up almost immediately. “Yeah!” No one seemed to ever come to the house except for the six humans that already lived there, and anyone they deemed worthy enough to invite over should be interesting just on principle.

“Let’s go, then, let’s go!” She nudged him to his feet, and they jumped up to the dresser to see comfortably out the window.

“Hey, bedbug,” Dongheon said pleasantly, already sitting in bee form on the windowsill. “Have a good rest? You’re sleeping quite a lot these days, we never see you anymore.”

“That’s what _I_ keep saying!” Nayoung added, sounding vindicated. “He’s so _boring_.”

“Taekwoon said it was okay…” Hoyoung said defensively, hurt. He curled his forked tail around his bandaged paws self-consciously and laid his ears slightly back.

“I’m just messing with you, bedbug,” Dongheon said, buzzing over to perch on Hoyoung’s nose and patting it comfortingly with one gold-striped foreleg. “You want to sleep all day, no skin off my nonexistent nose.”

“Sorry for teasing, Hoyoungie,” Nayoung added, brushing her tails against his side in apology. “Everyone says I’m always too impatient for my own good. You get better _fast_ , though, okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” Hoyoung muttered dryly.

“That’s the spirit! Oh, and look, there they are!” She bounced up and down on her toes as Hoyoung reflexively activated his camouflage and partially hid behind her to avoid being seen. He peered out around her also partially-invisible shoulder to catch a good glimpse of the newcomer.

Three kids entered the gate: Kangmin, Mina, and a boy around Mina’s age and height. He wore a nondescript school uniform with a battered black backpack slung over one shoulder and his blazer slung over the other. The two teens chatted- well, _Mina_ was chatting, and Gyehyeon seemed content to mostly listen. Kangmin kept peeking around his sister to steal intrigued glances at the older boy, though he wasn’t talking near as much as he normally did. Mina caught him looking and shooed him inside to work on his homework.

The small yard was not ideal for a workout session, given that half of it was already taken up by the garden, but Gyehyeon got the bright idea to wind the swings around the top bar of the swing set, which gave them a little more room. He seemed a bit withdrawn and curt at first, but proved to be a pretty patient teacher, and Mina got some basic forms down before Minchan got home.

The older boy greeted his younger sibling and her classmate cordially and went inside. He dropped off his backpack in his bedroom before leaving, presumably to join Kangmin at the kitchen table to “do their homework,” but Hoyoung suspected that not much homework was actually getting done. Eventually, as the shadows got longer, Mina and Gyehyeon headed inside, and voices sounded from the other side of the relatively thin walls. Hoyoung and Nayoung skittered under Kangmin’s bed while Dongheon disappeared inside the piano just in time for Minchan and their visitor to enter the room.

“-really good,” Minchan was saying. “Where did you learn all that?”

“A foreigner couple volunteered at the home once a week for about ten months during my last year in primary school. She taught cooking, he taught taekwondo,” came an unfamiliar, soft-spoken voice as Minchan closed the door behind them. “I figured I wasn’t going to get another chance before going into secondary school, so I never missed a lesson. Nice place you got here, by the way.”

“It’s not much, but it’s home,” Minchan said easily, crossing the room to sit at his piano. He spun around on the stool to face Gyehyeon, placing his hands on his knees with a loud slap. “So! I suppose the first thing to do would be to ask what exactly my sister told you I can do for you. In the spirit of full disclosure, I only took voice lessons for two years, so I’m not a certified expert by any stretch of the imagination.”

“It’s fine, sunbae,” was the short reply. “I’ll learn whatever you can teach me.”

“…Fair enough. Have you ever sung before?”

Gyehyeon shuffled his socked feet self-consciously. “I took choir for half a year in the home chapel when I was around eight, but then the choir director got married and moved away. She was the only staff member who had any musical aptitude at all, so…” He shrugged in what he probably hoped was a nonchalant manner.

Minchan nodded thoughtfully. “Okay then. Let’s start with the basics and go from there.”

Gyehyeon was awkward and more than a little standoffish at first as the lesson started, clearly trying to project a cool, indifferent image in front of the older boy. When his voice cracked embarrassingly on the first high note he tried to produce, however, the uproarious giggle fit both boys collapsed into did a whole lot to loosen up the atmosphere in the room. Gyehyeon seemed a little more settled after that, and he turned out to have a very pleasant voice, even untrained as it was.

As Nayoung and Hoyoung watched the proceedings with rapt attention, the door to the bedroom creaked open, and Kangmin poked his head in, looking as fascinated as the nekomata. Once the older boys reached a lull, Gyehyeon noticed the onlooker out of the corner of his eye and started visibly, cheeks reddening in embarrassment. Noticing his pupil’s discomfort, Minchan turned and noticed his starry-eyed little brother.

“Kangmin!”

“What?” he protested. “Sunbae sounds really good!”

Gyehyeon flushed harder at this, and Minchan pointed at the door. “Kangmin, go do your homework.”

“But-!”

_“Out.”_

Kangmin pouted and dragged his feet the entire way, but he went.

“Sorry about that,” Minchan apologized after his brother had left. “He’s a good kid, but he can be really nosy sometimes. You okay?”

“’S fine,” Gyehyeon mumbled, his cheeks still very red. “Let’s just move on, please.” Minchan wisely chose not to comment further and went back to the lesson.

About fifteen minutes later, they’d wrapped up and Minchan went over some exercises Gyehyeon could do as homework until their next session together. The smell of human food had permeated the small shack at that point, and Nayoung and Hoyoung crept out of the room to get into place for their own dinner. Kangmin sat at the table sulkily doing his homework, though he appeared to have been mollified somewhat by a handful of the cheap, sugary cereal Hana and Hakyeon kept in a high cabinet and brought out for treats and rewards for their younger siblings. Mina was busily helping Hana with something on the stove, hair still damp from her shower. The elder sister turned from the counter holding a plate piled high with rolls of kimbap, which she set down on the table.

“Minchan! It’s time for dinner!” she called, playfully smacking away Kangmin’s hand from snitching a roll prematurely.

“- _lot_ of potential, kid, I’m honestly pretty impressed,” Minchan was saying as the two boys exited the room. “And remember, at _least_ twenty minutes every day.” He tapped he small sheaf of papers Gyehyeon held carefully in both hands.

“I won’t forget, sunbae,” Gyehyeon promised, clearly fighting back a pleased smile at Minchan’s praise. “Thank you for your time.”

“No problem, it was fun!” Minchan beamed.

“Ah, you must be Jo Gyehyeon,” Hana said, smiling warmly. “I’m Bora, Mina’s unnie, but everyone calls me Hana. Pleased to meet you.”

“Pleased to meet you, too, ma’am,” Gyehyeon said, dropping into a respectful bow.

“Never mind the ma’am,” Hana waved him away, still smiling. “Call me noona. Won’t you stay for dinner? We have plenty of miso soup and kimbap.”

“Yeah!” Kangmin chirped, popping up from where he’d been stuffing his books into his backpack, face wreathed in smiles. “You can sit by me, sunbae! Sanghyuk-hyung won’t be home tonight until late, we have an extra seat!”

A peculiar look crossed Gyhyeon’s face at the invitation. His fingers reflexively tightened on the papers he held, and Hoyoung fully expected him to say yes… before his face suddenly went almost completely blank.

“No, thank you,” he said stiffly, stuffing the papers carelessly into his backpack and slinging it onto his shoulder. “I need to get back, they’re expecting me.”

“At least take a kimbap roll,” Mina insisted, grabbing the topmost roll and marching over to her classmate. “What kind of hosts would we be if we let you go home hungry?”

Gyehyeon’s eyes flicked from her to the roll a couple times before he reluctantly grabbed it and beat a hasty retreat to the front door. “Same time this Thursday?” she called after him.

“I’ll let you know,” he said shortly, slipping his shoes on and opening the front door. He turned and bowed again to Hana. “Thank you for the food, ma’am.”

And then he was gone.

Silence reigned for a few seconds before it was broken by a long sigh from Minchan. “Nice going, Kangmin.”

“Me?” Kangmin wilted visibly, and Hoyoung was seized with a sudden urge to go bite Minchan on the shin. “What did I do?”

“You scared him off is what you did,” Mina huffed, going back to the pot on the stove.

“I was just… _I_ would have wanted to eat dinner with a nice family if…” Kangmin mumbled, looking down at the table guiltily.

“Oh, Kangminnie.” Hana stroked his hair comfortingly, and he leaned miserably into her side. “And it was very sweet of you to offer, honey, but sometimes people aren’t ready to accept kindness they’re not used to. Pushing it only makes them more stubborn. Are you more likely to put away your clean clothes when hyung and I keep telling you, or is it easier to wait until you run out of underwear for you come to that conclusion on your own?”

“Noonaaaa, that’s different,” Kangmin whined, though he looked thoughtful.

“We’ll invite him to stay again, okay?” Minchan said, sitting down beside him and piling his plate with two rolls, before putting one on Kangmin’s plate and pushing it toward him. “But noona’s right, he shouldn’t feel obligated if it makes him uncomfortable.”

Kangmin brightened up and accepted the peace offering for what it was, a determined glint coming into his eyes as he took a large bite of his kimbap. “Well, I’m gonna _make_ him comfortable. If it’s the last thing I do!”

* * *

A few days later, Hoyoung found himself rudely awakened by an excited chatter of voices right next to his bed. He pressed his paws over his ears with a silent groan, but was unable to fully block out the noise. He heard Nayoung’s voice clearly, along with Yeonho’s and another female voice that Hoyoung didn’t recognize. This confused him. Why was Yeonho awake? He was normally sound asleep during the day, and they’d barely exchanged any words since Hoyoung had started living at the small shack. Was something wrong?

Hoyoung crept over and stuck his head out from under the bed. Nayoung was perched daintily on the dresser, while Yeonho and another monster Hoyoung hadn’t met stood close by. Yeonho noticed him first.

“Oh, hey, sleepyhead!” He grinned widely, showing his crooked, razor-sharp teeth. “Long time no see! You doing okay?”

“Yes, thank you,” Hoyoung replied, smiling back, happier than he thought he’d be to see the dream-eater again. “What’s going on?”

“We’re going out to play!” Nayoung said brightly. “Yeonho and Soyee went to bed early so they would be able to come with me and oppa.” She gave him an apologetic look. “Sorry if we woke you up, you normally sleep through noise like this."

“I thought you didn’t like the sun,” Hoyoung said to Yeonho, choosing to ignore the implications of the latter half of her statement. The baku shrugged.

“I don’t, but it’s better than sneaking out at night. Even if it wouldn’t risk drawing the attention of the humans, there are… things… out there you don’t want to draw the attention of at night. Soyee lost a toe last time we went out to play after dark, she got scolded by Taekwoon and Hongbin for like a week.” He gestured to the other baku, who, despite being the same species, looked almost nothing like him aside from their long, thin, tufted tails. While Yeonho had a wolfish appearance, Soyee looked bearlike, with a stocky body and wide, heavy paws with extremely long claws. One of these paws she extended toward Hoyoung, a grin revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth, much straighter than Yeonho’s.

“Hello,” she rumbled in an unhurried, easygoing drawl. “I’m Soyee. Yeonho’s told me all about you. Pleased to finally meet you.”

“Likewise,” Hoyoung replied, tentatively putting his bandaged paw in Soyee’s and trying not to think about how it was big enough to cleanly take off his entire head in one swipe. And… yes, she was indeed missing a toe on her right foot. He winced reflexively in sympathy.

“Come on, guys, let’s go, stop wasting daylight, Taekwoon’s already leaving us in the dust,” Nayoung said impatiently from atop the dresser, having pried the window open enough for her to slip through, forked tail disappearing over the windowsill like two black ribbons.

“Well, see you later, Hoyoung,” Yeonho said, getting down on all fours and running straight through the wall, phasing through it harmlessly. Soyee patted Hoyoung on the head gently with her huge paw and made as if to follow him, before Hoyoung impulsively spoke up.

“Wait!” She paused, looking back at him quizzically. “Could… could I come with you?”

“Oh! Well… maybe some other time?” Her expression turned apologetic. “Nayoungie said you have to sleep a lot because you’re hurt. You wouldn’t be able to keep up with us.” That… should _not_ have stung as much as it did. But Hoyoung couldn’t deny that she was right. “Besides, you need to get better first; the oppas would be very upset if you let yourself get hurt worse.”

Hoyoung tried to keep his disappointment off his face and attempted a smile. “Yeah. Yeah, of course you’re right. Sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking.”

“Don’t worry about it! I’m sure you’ll be better in no time.” She patted him on the head again, and then she was gone. Hoyoung stood alone in the middle of the empty bedroom, feeling uncomfortably like he’d been ditched. Even Taekwoon had left him behind!

_“He’s so **boring**.”_

Hoyoung’s ears flattened themselves against his skull, and he hunched his shoulders. Of course they left him behind. Everyone always did, in the end. Mama, Papa, his siblings, Luke and Isaac, Hyeyeon. And besides, how could he expect everyone to just suddenly include him in all their activities after he’d only joined the household a little over a week and a half ago and spent most of that time sleeping like a lazy layabout? He glared hatefully down at his bandaged paws, berating himself for being so careless during his weeks on the streets. If only he’d been more careful and hadn’t let himself get into such a sorry state, maybe then he’d have an active shot at making a place for himself here before they got tired of him instead of being seen as little more than a glorified knickknack. 

His ears perked back up as an idea occurred to him, and he bolted from the room as fast as his legs could carry him. Hobbling to the kitchen, he ran up to the broom closet door and scratched at it. “Hongbin! Hongbin!”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” came the moon rabbit’s gruff, deep voice. The small monster pushed open the closet door, squinting as he looked him up and down appraisingly. “Where’s the fire? Did you hurt yourself?”

“IfeelmuchbetternowcanyoutakemybandagesoffsoIcangooutsideplease?” The words came out in a jumbled rush. Hongbin stared at him for a long moment, working out the sentence, and then he let out a short, disbelieving laugh.

“Kit, I don’t care if you feel like you could take on three lion dogs at once, you’re going to need at _least_ another week and a half of healing before I’m letting you go gallivanting off around _this_ neighborhood. Though that reminds me, your bandages need to be changed.” He hopped up onto one of the kitchen chairs and then onto the table, beckoning Hoyoung after him. “Come on, get your butt up here, Hoyoung, we don’t have all day, no time like the present.”

The wind went out of Hoyoung’s sails as fast as it had come, and he found he barely had the energy to follow Hongbin onto the table. He sat there watching Hongbin bustle around getting the necessary supplies, ears and tail drooping dejectedly. Not even the sight of Xiening’s sweet little face poking out from among the flowers in her vase and smiling brightly at him was enough to raise his spirits.

“What brought this on, anyway?” Hongbin asked, grabbing a container of flour out of a cabinet. “I’d have thought you wouldn’t want to step foot outside again for at least a month after what happened to you.”

“It’s not important,” sighed Hoyoung, trying to muster a smile for Xiening as the item ghost skipped over to give him her customary flower.

Hongbin gave him a look that plainly said he didn’t believe a word of that, but thankfully, he didn’t press it. He whipped up a new batch of poultice from the herbs Xiening provided so fast that he was almost a blur, and then motioned Hoyoung over so he could unwrap the bandages around Hoyoung’s forelegs. Even Hoyoung had to admit that the burns and sores covering them looked much better than they had a week ago. They felt much better, too, even though moving almost always hurt.

“Seriously, why so glum, Hoyoung?” Hongbin asked, smearing the poultice on the paw nearest him. “You weren’t even this down the first time you stepped through the door looking a couple levels up from reanimated roadkill.”

Hoyoung took a few moments to organize his thoughts. Finally, he said, “What am I doing here, Hongbin?”

“You’re getting your bandages changed,” was the immediate deadpan reply.

“ _No_ , I mean…” Hoyoung waved his other paw in a circular motion as he tried to find the words. “What am I doing _here_? All I do is eat, sleep, and get underfoot. You’ve all been so kind, made me feel so welcome, but…” Should he even say it? Maybe he was just imagining it, being paranoid. But the words came out almost on their own, “there’s a part of me that still feels like a stranger.”

“That’s because you are,” Hongbin said bluntly. “We’ve only known you for about a week. It takes time to get to know people, kit, and you’ve been out cold for most of aforementioned week. You can’t expect to be buddy-buddy best friends with everyone all at once.”

“But… but what if that never happens?” Hoyoung asked, blurting out the words before he could stop himself. “I’m not… I’m not _used_ to… _this_.” He gestured at the whole house. “Monsters don’t usually share territory for a reason, Hongbin! What if you get to know me and you don’t… like what you see? What if I’m just a nuisance? I'm not actively contributing in any way to you or your humans at all, so what if… what if everyone’s just pretending to be nice to me because they feel sorry for me, and once I get better they kick me ou-?” A luminous white paw pressed against his mouth cut off the rambling flow of words.

“Okay, _first_ of all,” Hongbin said sternly, “you are _not_ a nuisance. Get that thought out of your head right now. Taekwoon’s been happier in the last week than he’s been in a long time because he’s had someone new to fuss over. Second of all, we’re not just going to kick you out now that it’s been decided you can stay. Not unless you were an active danger to our humans, and you wouldn’t even be here in the first place if you were, so that’s another thing you don’t have to worry about.”

“But what if I mess up really bad? What if you decide you don’t like me anymore or that I'm too much of a liability? What do I do then?”

Hongbin was silent for a long moment. Then he sighed, long and loudly, and began to bind up Hoyoung’s wounds with a clean change of bandages. “I asked myself the same question for a long time, kit.” That stopped Hoyoung cold.

“Y… you did?” The rabbit nodded, studiously not looking at him. “But… but you’re a moon rabbit. Isn’t it supposed to be an honor for your kind to stay in someone’s home?”

“I’m not… exactly an ordinary moon rabbit,” Hongbin said with a wry twist of his mouth, turning away to clean up his supplies. “If you think I’m fastidious, you should meet the rest of my kind. You can’t have a hair out of place, leave a speck of dust anywhere. You should be graceful, elegant, refined, serene, orderly at all times. ‘A moon rabbit can’t use such uncouth language, Hongbin!’ ‘Hongbin, you can’t be so expressive, a moon rabbit does not broadcast their feelings for everyone to see.’ ‘Shut up, Hongbin, no one cares what you have to say, Hongbin, you’re not good enough, Hongbin, when are you going to find a nice doe so your genes don’t go to waste, Hongbin, that’s all you have going for you, _Hongbin_.’”

He jammed the lid on the container of flour viciously. “It’s always about them, the collective, the image; you’re just a cog in the grand machine, and if you put a whisker out of line, you can be replaced just like that. Well.” He gave a humorless snort. “I put a whisker out of line, let’s just say. And I ended up here. Honestly, I was one of the lucky ones. I spent a long time thinking that if I didn’t play my part, I’d just end up homeless again.” He sighed again, back to Hoyoung, as he passed over the leftover herbs and flowers to Xiening, who patted him comfortingly on his little white head before disappearing back into her vase.

Finally, Hoyoung dared to ask, “What made you… not think that, anymore?”

“Combination of things, really. Mostly, though, I think it was just because I got to know everyone. And the more I got to know everyone, the more I realized they didn’t care if I was the picture perfect image of what a moon rabbit ‘should’ be, or if I was 'contributing enough to the household.' They liked me for me.” Hongbin gave Hoyoung a lopsided grin. “And if this lot can accept crusty, prickly old me, then you shouldn’t have any problem winning them over in short order.” 

Shocked, pleased warmth spread throughout Hoyoung at the moon rabbit’s words. “You… you really mean it?”

Hongbin held a paw under his chin, assuming a completely deadpan expression. “Does this look like the face of a jokester?”

“No, you look pretty serious,” Hoyoung admitted, finally cracking a smile.

“Thought so.” Hongbin tugged lightly at Hoyoung’s ear, chivvying him down from the table to the floor. “Now get out of here, I’m no good at this mushy stuff and I need a nap.”

“I think you’re pretty good at it,” Hoyoung offered shyly.

“Tell anyone, and I’ll _find_ you,” Hongbin threatened, stomping into his broom closet and slamming the door behind him. Hoyoung, not fooled in the least by his bluster, smiled all the way back to Minchan and Kangmin’s bedroom.

He yawned reflexively once entering, already feeling tired enough to go back to sleep for the rest of the afternoon… but a soft murmur of voices outside the open window stopped him. Hopping up to the dresser, he peeked out the window tentatively, only to see… nothing.

As he blinked in confusion, a voice right by his ear said, “Hoyoung! Hello- sorry! Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you, calm down!” Hoyoung’s racing heart pounded against his ribs, every strand of his fur standing on end. The form of a boy with wooden skin and leafy hair melted out of the rosebush to his left and crouched below the window, sap green eyes wide and extremely contrite. “I’m really sorry, are you okay?”

“Yeah… yeah, I’m fine,” Hoyoung said, his voice emerging as an embarrassing squeak. He cleared his throat and willed his fur to lay down flat again. “Wasn’t expecting that is all. When something suddenly jumps out at me it usually doesn’t have the best of intentions in my experience.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Yongseung promised solemnly, before a look of mild confusion came over his face. “What are you doing up, though? Aren’t you normally asleep at this hour?”

“Ah, well… Nayoung and the baku talked a little too loudly, and I needed my bandages changed anyway, so…” Hoyoung shrugged, trying not to appear too self-conscious as Yongseung made an understanding noise. Overcome by sudden curiosity, he asked, “Why didn’t you go with them, though? Do you not like to play their games?”

Now it was Yongseung’s turn to look self-conscious. The drus stood and leaned on the side of the house with a small sigh. “I would, but I... well, I’m not old enough to go very far from my bush yet. I can go about as far as the street. And we don’t have a lot of room here, so if everyone wants to run around, they run the risk of damaging my garden. And of course we can’t run the risk of someone passing by and seeing a couple baku gallivanting around in broad daylight. But it’s fine! I talk with Dongheon a lot.” He gestured to a large, white rose growing near the window where a black bee covered in shimmery, golden, tiger-like stripes sat. As Hoyoung watched, the bee waved unhurriedly at them with a foreleg. “He’s good company, and some of the others like to come out and get some sunlight sometimes, too. And anyway, I’ll be able to go out and explore someday, so what’s a little bit of waiting in the grand scheme of things, really?”

Despite his hopeful words, Yongseung wasn’t quite able to keep the wistful note out of his voice, and he suddenly looked… very young. A surge of empathy welled up in Hoyoung, and he experienced a brief but bizarrely strong compulsion to shift to his human form and give the small drus a hug. He settled for jumping down into the garden (and oh, that was a _bad_ idea, he’d be feeling that for at least a day, _ouch_ ) and brushing up against Yongseung’s leg as he sat at his feet.

“What are you doing, bedbug?” Dongheon spoke up for the first time as Yongseung blinked down at him in confusion. “Hongbin’ll tie your tails in a knot if you get your bandages covered in dirt and track it all over the house.”

“It’ll be fine,” Hoyoung waved him away. “So, Yongseung, think you could tell me a bit more about your garden? I didn’t get a good look at it the first time I saw it, since it was nighttime and all.”

Yongseung lit up like a neon sign. “Really?” At Hoyoung’s encouraging nod, he smiled so wide it looked like his jaw might fall off. He crouched down and pointed to the row of sprouts right in front of them. “So this is going to be cabbage. They’re coming along well, but the maggots are already starting to go for them, and I have my work cut out for me keeping them away. This little one right here gets targeted a lot, so I give it extra attention, and _this_ one will be the biggest and juiciest, I can already tell-”

Hoyoung let Yongseung’s words wash over him and enjoyed the feel of the sun on his fur for the first time in almost two weeks. The warmth made him drowsy, and he knew he’d only be able to stay awake for half an hour at most, but it would be worth it if Yongseung kept smiling like that. Maybe Hongbin was right after all. Maybe they all just needed a little time. 

(True to Dongheon's prediction, Hongbin scolded Hoyoung vehemently for getting his bandages all dirty the next day, but Hoyoung found he really didn’t mind at all.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *sets out small plastic cup* Feedback keeps authors motivated to write, so if you could, please spare a comment for this one!


	2. Heart

“Hyung! You were so cool today!” came Kangmin’s muffled voice on the other side of the bedroom door as Nayoung and Hoyoung jostled for position under his bed.

“When did I say you could call me hyung?” Gyehyeon said, the door opening to let in him and Minchan, Kangmin following at their heels like a puppy.

“You didn’t say I _couldn’t_ ,” Kangmin replied innocently. “Anyways! Do you want a snack? I have an extra one.” He shyly held out a small bag of chips.

“You never give _me_ snacks,” Minchan grumbled, taking his usual seat at his piano, the action disturbing the bowl set atop it to catch the drops of rain that made their way through the leaky roof, making the water inside slosh. “This is blatant favoritism!”

“You don’t _deserve_ them after you got into my stash last month,” Kangmin sniffed, beaming from ear to ear when Gyehyeon accepted his offering with a mumbled “thanks.”

“For the last time, I thought those were for everyone-!”

“You’re welcome, hyung!” Kangmin said, blithely ignoring his older brother entirely. “I hope you like them!” His eyes widened. “Oh! That’s a pretty necklace; where did you get it? Is that a puzzle piece?” Hoyoung craned his neck to get a look at the piece of jewelry, and was just in time to catch a flash of silver chain and matching pendant shaped like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle before Gyehyeon tucked it away into his damp shirt.

“It’s just a dumb necklace,” he said shortly, wiping rainwater out of his eyes.

“Oh…” Kangmin faltered slightly and then smiled again. “Well, have fun with your lesson. I’ll just… go do my homework now…” He backpedaled out of the room and shut the door behind him.

“Do you want some, hyung?” Gyehyeon offered, opening the bag of chips and holding it out to the older boy.

“You’re _officially_ my new favorite dongsaeng,” Minchan said in satisfaction, taking a small handful. After shoving them all in his mouth at once, he said, “Alright, let’s get started.”

“Manners, hyung,” Gyehyeon said mildly.

“I do what I want!”

The lesson began properly after that. Even Hoyoung, who knew absolutely nothing about music, could tell Gyehyeon had improved considerably in just two weeks of lessons. He was also genuinely _happy_ when he was singing, in a way he simply wasn’t at any other time, and Hoyoung and Nayoung vied for the choicest golden sparkles he produced as a pre-dinner snack. After running through a song Gyehyeon had picked out last week that they’d been working on for the past two sessions, Minchan let the last notes fade away and gave Gyehyeon an extremely impressed look.

“Seriously, kid, you have _talent_. I bet you could even turn pro if you trained for a few years with a coach who actually knew what they were doing. I bet you’d get super famous!”

Instead of looking pleased at the praise, however, Gyehyeon seemed... almost upset? The golden sparkles petered out as abruptly as if a faucet had been shut off. “Yeah, well. We both know that’s not going to happen, so no point in talking about it.”

“Why not?” Minchan spun around on the piano stool to face him. “If it’s money you’re worried about, Hakyeon-hyung knows some people, and there are some nonprofit programs out there you can apply for; that’s how we were able to get Kangmin on the soccer team or pay for my piano lessons. I could have taken voice lessons again, but we could only apply for one extracurricular per kid, and I wanted piano lessons more, but in a year I’m going to apply for voice lessons again, so I’m sure if you want we could-”

“Hyung, just _drop_ it,” Gyehyeon snapped, startling Minchan into silence. “Even if I took voice lessons for years, it wouldn’t matter.”

“Not with that attitude, it won’t,” Minchan said disapprovingly.

Gyehyeon exhaled loudly through his nose, glancing up at the stained ceiling as if praying for patience. “Look, with all due respect, hyung, you wouldn’t understand. Can we please just move on?”

Minchan’s lips pressed into a thin line. “Try me.”

“You’re really going to make me spell it out for you, hyung?” Gyehyeon said, running his fingers through his hair in frustration. “Alright, _fine_. I’m an orphan. A nobody. Nobodies don’t _get_ famous. I’ll be lucky to even get a job once I age out of the system. This?” He gestured between himself and Minchan. “Is fun, but I’m not going to kid myself into thinking that I’ll ever have a future in it. An entertainment agency would never hire someone with no parents or family or birth records to be their next big star, it just doesn’t _happen_. I know you mean well, hyung, but not all of us have families that want us and bright shining futures ahead of us, okay? So just… drop it. Please. Let’s just get back to the song.”

Minchan stared wordlessly back at him, face disconcertingly blank. Finally, he spoke. “Do you know why I stopped taking voice lessons after only two years?”

Gyehyeon blinked in confusion at the seemingly random question. Without even waiting for a response, Minchan kept talking. “Back when Mina and I still lived with our mom, I overheard her talking with her boyfriend du jour after she thought we’d both gone to bed. The checks our dad sent every month weren’t coming anymore, and she couldn’t pay for the latest fashion trends from Louis Vuitton and Gucci and raise two kids at the same time. Think of how the ladies at work would _talk_ if she didn’t look her best! She might even lose her job if she couldn’t stay in style, and then where would we all be? Maybe it would be for the best if Mina and I lived at the local children’s home for a bit while she got her finances in order.”

One corner of Minchan’s mouth lifted in a humorless grin. It looked… wrong on him. “I went to Mom the very next morning and said I wanted to drop out of voice lessons. They weren’t doing it for me anymore. Should have seen the look on her face, it was like Christmas had come early.”

Minchan took a deep breath, and looked Gyehyeon straight in the eye. “So yeah. I get it. When your own mother would rather hand legal custody of you off to your oldest half-brother rather than live without the latest handbag for a few months, it’s kind of hard to not wonder what would have happened to me and Mina if our hyung hadn’t been willing to take us in. We got lucky, but that doesn’t mean our lives are suddenly sunshine and rainbows now, either. We’re both still bastards, and that’s permanently on our record for any potential employer to see, along with our mom’s extensive history of poor life choices.”

His jaw took on a mulish tilt. “I’m not going to let that stop me, though. I want to be a video editor and maybe even a music and video producer after I graduate, and if no one will hire me here because they think my pedigree is ‘beneath them,’ then I’ll get a job like hyung, save up, and move to Australia or maybe the U.S. Foreigners don’t tend to care much who you are or where you come from if you’re willing to work hard. Mina’s said she’ll probably come with me if the whole acting thing doesn’t work out for her.

“I’m not telling you all this to make you feel sorry for us or think we’re some picture perfect family that has it all together, by the way, because-” He made a face, “-we’re most definitely not, and we don’t. Six kids from four different moms does not a perfect family make; we _all_ have issues. All I’m saying is that if we’ve been able to somehow make this convoluted mess of a family work so far, you have options, too. Obviously, it’s none of my business to tell you what you should do with your life, but don’t think you can’t have dreams or aspirations or friends just because of where you came from. There are people out there who don’t care that you’re an orphan, just as there are people who don’t care that I’m a bastard. I mean, _I_ don’t care that you’re an orphan. Do you care that I’m a bastard?”

Gyehyeon’s lips twitched upwards for the first time since the lesson started. “No.”

Minchan leaned back and rested his elbows on the keyboard with a discordant chime of notes, beaming with satisfaction. “There, case in point.”

A companionable silence fell for a few seconds before Gyehyeon, in a tone that was simultaneously impressed and a little horrified, asked, “You guys really have four different moms?”

“ _That’s_ what you focus on. Of course.” Now it was Minchan’s turn to look at the ceiling as if praying for patience. “Yes, our dad was a serial womanizer and only two of us are actually legitimate. Sounds like something out of a bad TV drama, I know. We’re definitely related, though, we have the DNA tests to prove it.”

Gyehyeon was saved from having to immediately respond by Hana’s distant “Kids! Time for dinner!”

“Geez, already?” Minchan groused, standing and stretching. “That hour went fast. So.” He glanced at Gyehyeon and held out a fist. “Same time this Tuesday?”

Gyehyeon evaluated the older boy for a few seconds and then knocked his fist against Minchan’s. “Yeah.”

“Is it true?” Hoyoung whispered to Nayoung as they slipped out of the room when Minchan opened the bedroom door and crept under the living room couch where Taekwoon was already waiting for them. “What Minchan said about his mom…?”

Nayoung’s ears folded backwards sadly. “Yeah. He never told Mina about the specifics, but he was… very miserable. For… a long time. He didn’t start producing any significant amount of joy until Hakyeon got legal custody of them. He’s a lot better now.”

“Good evening, boys,” Hakyeon was saying, smiling warmly at them as they came into view. Kangmin was snuggled into his side, little curlicues of adoration and sparkles of happiness already littering the floor around them as they sat at the table, which Taekwoon had been snacking on while waiting for the younger nekomata to join him. Even Sanghyuk was home tonight, an extremely rare occurrence that always promised more food than the three nekomata could eat. “Gyehyeon-yah, won’t you stay for dinner? We have dumplings and kimchi tonight.”

Instead of politely but firmly declining like he usually did whenever Hakyeon or Hana invited him to stay for a meal, Gyehyeon hesitated, playing with his fingers nervously as he glanced at Hakyeon, then Hana, then Mina and Sanghyuk, then Kangmin, then lastly at Minchan. Finally, in a tone of voice Hoyoung had never heard from him before, he said, “If… if you’re sure it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

“Not at all,” Hakyeon assured him, as Kangmin sprang up to pull one of the two spare chairs over to the table and Hana immediately got another set of mismatched dishes out of a cabinet. Sanghyuk cleared a space at the table with practiced ease while Mina ran forward to drag Gyehyeon to the table by an arm, chattering excitedly the whole time. The boy shot an overwhelmed, pleading look over his shoulder at Minchan, who just grinned back at him and clapped him on the shoulder, before taking his usual seat over by Sanghyuk.

Once Gyehyeon was situated in between Mina and Kangmin and Hana set a steaming plate of food in front of him, he still looked more than slightly overwhelmed… but he was also genuinely smiling for the first time that day. 

* * *

“Yongseung! Dongheon!” Hoyoung leaned out the bedroom window and poked the nearest white rose before tapping a paw on top of the piano right next to the dresser right in a bright patch of sunshine. “Come here, look, look!”

“Someone’s awfully energetic today.” The item ghost crawled out of the piano just as a stiff breeze blew through the room, carrying with it a number of leaves and rose petals that coalesced into Yongseung’s humanoid form.

“What-? Oh, Hoyoungie!” Yongseung gasped happily, rushing over to get a closer look at the nekomata’s forelegs. “Hongbin finally let you take your bandages off?”

“He did,” Hoyoung grinned at his friend as Dongheon landed atop one of the roses growing out of Yongseung’s leafy hair. “Gave me a clean bill of health, though he said he’d ‘kill me, resurrect me, and kill me again’ if I exerted myself too much too soon.”

“Do they still hurt?” Yongseung asked, lightly poking a root-like finger at the shiny, pale pink scars winding their way up Hoyoung’s forelegs amidst his white fur.

“Kind of,” Hoyoung admitted. “But definitely not as much as they used to. Hongbin said they’ll be sensitive for a while, but they're more itchy than anything.” 

Dongheon let out a low whistle as he flew closer to get a better look at the scars (how he was able to whistle as a bee, Hoyoung didn’t know and wasn’t about to ask). “What do the human kids say nowadays? Gnarly, is that the word?”

“Thanks,” Hoyoung said dryly.

“This means you can finally help me in my garden, Hoyoung!” Yongseung said, beaming up at him. “You’ve been saying how much you want to help for days now, time to put your money where your mouth is.”

“Not just yet, he’s not!” came Nayoung’s strident voice from the door. The black and white nekomata marched into the bedroom, Soyee lumbering behind her. She gave Hoyoung a wordless little wave as he caught her eye. Nayoung hopped up onto the dresser to join Hoyoung and poked him in the chest. “ _You_ , mister, are coming with us! Speaking of, Soyee, could you…?”

“Yeah.” Soyee scratched at the closet door. “Yeonnie, time to go play!”

“You mean you want me to-? I can-?” Hoyoung looked at Nayoung disbelievingly, unable to formulate a complete sentence in his confusion.

“What do you take us for?” Nayoung demanded. “Of _course_ we want you to come play outside with us! The only reason we haven’t invited you before now is because we wanted you to finish healing first.”

It was probably pathetic how happy those words made Hoyoung, but right then, he couldn’t care less. They _wanted_ him. Someone actually wanted _him_!

“So you’re stealing him away from us, I see how it is,” Dongheon said, hovering in front of Nayoung’s face and poking her little black nose accusingly.

Hoyoung’s happiness dimmed, guilt immediately taking his place as he glanced remorsefully at Yongseung. What should he do? He wanted so badly to go outside and stretch his legs, but he didn’t want to make Dongheon and Yongseung upset with him, either! 

Something of his internal struggle must have shown on his face, because Yongseung frowned. “Stop teasing, Dongheon, you know how Hoyoung gets when you do that,” he chastised, before crouching down to be at eye level with the nekomata on the dresser. “Hoyoung, it’s fine if you want to go. Really. Your kind isn’t meant to be cooped up forever. Dongheon and I won’t be offended if you go spend some time with the others, promise. Just be sure to tell us all about it when you get back.”

“I will,” Hoyoung promised, immensely relieved. “I wish you could come with us!”

“Yeah, well, until Soyee and Yeonho get big enough to carry a piano through the streets with us, it’s not gonna happen,” Nayoung said, batting Dongheon away easily. He shifted to his humanoid form so he could continue to poke at her.

“I get big enough to what?” said a voice from inside the closet as Yeonho finally emerged from inside, yawning widely. On the way out, he tripped over his feet and fell in a heap on the rug. “Ow.” He opened one eye, squinted at all the faces looking down at him. “Um. What’s going on?”

“You’re stealing our Hoyoungie away from us!” Dongheon grabbed Hoyoung and made a great show of sobbing into his fur.

“Oh, you’re coming with us today, Hoyoung?” Yeonho said in pleasant surprise as Soyee helped him to his feet. “It’s about time!”

“I guess I am,” Hoyoung replied, whacking Dongheon repeatedly on the head in an attempt to get some personal space. “Though,” He glanced around the room again, noticing one person was conspicuously absent, “is Taekwoon… not coming?”

“Our teams would be uneven if Taekwoon came. Besides, he’s visiting his friends Sunggyu and Dongwoo right now.”

“Taekwoon has _friends_?” The words left Hoyoung’s mouth before he realized just how bad they sounded, and he clapped his paws over is mouth in mortification.

“ _Astrals_ , Hoyoung, I can’t believe you just said that!” Yeonho exclaimed, doubling over with laughter.

“No, I’m sorry! That’s not what I meant!” Hoyoung protested desperately. “It’s just that… there already so many monsters that live _here_ , and everyone keeps talking about how this neighborhood is dangerous, so…”

“It is,” Nayoung said, patting him comfortingly while glaring at a still-chortling Yeonho. “But not everyone in it is dangerous, and sometimes you run into them instead. Dongwoo, for example, is a hippocamp who lives in an abandoned swimming pool a couple blocks away, and Sunggyu… well, the place apparently had enough ambient magic that it spontaneously generated a nix. Oppa may be shy and intimidating, but he’s a big old softie once you get to know him, so he likes having friends.”

“That makes sense,” Hoyoung admitted.

“So are we going to stand around talking all day, or…?” Yeonho said impatiently, having gotten over his bout of hilarity.

“True, daylight’s wasting,” Nayoung said. “See you later, Yongseung, Dongheon.”

“Bye!” Yongseung waved as Hoyoung followed the elder nekomata out the window, trotting swiftly through the garden and through the front gate. “Have fun!”

“And be careful!” Dongheon called after them.

“Worrywart,” Nayoung said, rolling her eyes but sounding fond. She turned to the left and led Hoyoung around the fence perimeter toward the three-story apartment complex Jellyfish Cottage had been built directly behind. It seemed partially abandoned, with some of the windows facing out into the yard either broken or boarded up. A single, rusty metal door, located only a few feet beyond the fence around the cottage itself, was the only true entrance on that side of the building. The cottage and its fenced-in yard took up about half of the space behind the apartment building and the abandoned clothing store that shielded it from the street. The rest of the block was covered in thick, untrimmed grass, dandelions, and painful-looking thistles, which would explain why Mina and Gyehyeon never practiced taekwondo outside the fence despite there being ample space to do so.

A tall, concrete wall topped with razor wire bordered the far end of the yard, and the sound of an occasional car starting up and driving off on the other side of it could occasionally be heard. Creeping bushes had grown up against the wall, covering it in greenery, and a couple more evergreen trees dotted the yard and block at random intervals. A wooden, weathered picnic table sat under one of the trees, one of its benches conspicuously missing. Piles of bricks, gravel, sand, and wooden planks had been piled up near the wall as well, presumably for the half-finished building taking up the fourth side of the block that would probably never be completed, judging from the weeds growing out of the piles and the dilapidated, skeletal look of the building itself. Not for the first time, Hoyoung wondered why their family of humans lived here of all places, and he voiced the question to Nayoung.

“Had something to do with how cheap the owner was letting the shack go for,” she told him as they padded through the long grass to the farthest corner of the yard, carefully avoiding the many patches of thistles. “I think it was originally built as a place to keep cleaning supplies and give the staff a place to eat their meals, but when the place went downhill, the owner let Hakyeon have it for barely anything. Of course, they had to work really hard to fix it up, but Hana and Sanghyuk’s mom had saved up some money before she died, which allowed them to get it livable. Not to say things don’t break from time to time, and the roof is a mess, and it can get freezing in winter and sweltering in summer, but from what oppa tells me, it’s way better than it used to be, and they have heaters and fans and such for when the weather gets really bad. Ah, here we are!”

Nayoung came to a stop in front of a small, wooden shed had been built under one of the few trees, situated snugly in the far corner of where the apartment building met the concrete wall. It was so unobtrusive and out of the way that Hoyoung hadn’t even noticed it before. The windows were boarded shut, and the door was securely locked.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Our clubhouse!” Nayoung said. “Well, technically it’s a toolshed, but no one seems to use it anymore, so we took to stashing our toys and other things we find here after Taekwoon figured out it could be unlocked from the inside by getting in through a hole in the roof. Luckily, we have a couple baku, so we don’t need to climb a tree every time we want to get inside.”

“Welcome, honored guest!” Yeonho said, gesturing grandly as he swept the door open with a loud squeal of rusty hinges. “Well, I guess you’re not a guest anymore, huh? Still, it’s your first time, so technically you’re a guest!”

“Yeonho, just let him in.” Soyee pulled him inside, letting the two nekomata enter before shutting the door behind them. Hoyoung glanced around curiously as his eyes adjusted to the dim interior. The first thing he noticed was the hole in the ceiling showing the cloudy blue sky. Directly underneath was a patch of dandelions growing in the only patch of sunlight on the dirt floor. The space was wide enough for about five grown humans to stand side by side, and a number of garden tools and a lawnmower had been piled up in the back to make room for three chairs made of cinderblocks and ratty cushions. A few books and magazines had been placed on some of the shelves lining the walls. Scenic pictures of various forests, mountains, and human cities hung on the walls, salvaged from discarded calendars, judging from the shape. Strings of colored glass shards hung from the ceiling so that the light from above would catch on them and reflect a rainbow of colors in the otherwise dreary space.

“So?” The other three monsters looked at Hoyoung expectantly. Yeonho, the one who had spoken, wagged his tail eagerly. “What do you think?”

“It’s amazing!” Hoyoung told them honestly. “I like the strings of glass.” Hoyoung pointed with his tails.

“I made them,” Nayoung beamed. “And Yeonho found the pictures, and Soyee made the chairs, and Taekwoon found the cushions.”

“Come look at my funny rock collection, Hoyoung!” Yeonho chivvied him over to a metal tin holding a number of oddly-colored and shaped rocks. He pointed at a clear, oblong piece of green crystal that looked almost like glass. “That one’s my favorite; I found it embedded in a concrete wall right after I got here. Took me an hour to chip it out!”

“It’s very pretty,” Hoyoung said, nudging it with a paw to watch it sparkle. 

“Thank you!”

“Hoyoung, come over and sit on this chair,” Nayoung patted one of the makeshift chairs. “It’s the comfiest.”

“Guys, come on, you can give him the grand tour of the clubhouse later,” Soyee said, plucking a battered, red rubber ball about ten inches in diameter off one of the shelves. “I thought we came out here to play.”

“Ground rules first,” Nayoung said, nudging Hoyoung up onto the chair she pointed out. She was right; it _was_ very comfortable, despite the fact that the cushion had obviously seen much better days. “So the house, the yard, and our clubhouse are pretty safe, Hoyoung, but you have to be careful if you decide to explore the neighborhood. Monsters around here can be pretty territorial, and so are the humans. But you shouldn’t worry! Nothing bad has happened yet aside from what happened to Soyee’s toe. Well, nothing that we’ve had to tell Taekwoon about, anyway.” She winked at him. “Just stick with us, and you’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” Hoyoung agreed readily. “What kind of games do you play?”

“All sorts!” Yeonho replied. “Oh, speaking of, we have to pick teams.” He grabbed a handful of twigs off the shelf and shuffled them for a moment before holding them out. “Stained on one team, plain on the other.”

Everyone picked a twig. Hoyoung’s turned out to have a black grease stain on one end, and so did Soyee’s. “Guess you’re on my team then,” she told him with a friendly grin.

“You guys are going _down_ ,” Yeonho taunted. “Nayoung and I won’t show you any mercy, will we, Nayoung?”

“Absolutely not,” she grinned. “Now, let’s get going. To the abandoned lot, everyone!”

“Nayoung, didn’t oppa say not to go there anymore?” Soyee murmured, almost too quietly to hear, as Yeonho opened the toolshed door to let the nekomata out. “What if they catch us again?”

“No worries,” Nayoung waved her away as she and Hoyoung departed. “Taekwoon _said_ they came to some kind of agreement, so it should be fine. No one should be there right now regardless, so they won’t even know we’re there.”

Seeming satisfied, Soyee let Yeonho close the door, lock it, and the two baku then phased through the walls. Nayoung led Hoyoung back the way they’d come, activating her camouflage as they neared the street. He followed her lead and made sure to stick close by as she snuck across the crumbling streets and sidewalks, past graffitied walls and signs, to a vacant lot sandwiched between an art supply store and a corner grocery, ringed by a high, wooden fence.

Squeezing in through a small gap in the fence behind Nayoung, Hoyoung found himself standing in a grassy lot, strewn with here and there with trash in some places. Yeonho and Soyee emerged through the fence a few seconds later, dropping their camouflage just like the nekomata. Then, the other three monsters shifted, Nayoung becoming much larger, and the baku becoming smaller, until two teenage human girls and one preteen human boy stood in their place. Hoyoung hesitated a moment, and then followed their lead. After taking a moment as he always did to adjust to having two legs instead of four, especially since this was the first time he’d shifted to his human form in almost a month, Hoyoung stood and regarded the changed forms of his companions.

Soyee and Nayoung seemed about the same age, with Nayoung slightly older, maybe around Sanghyuk’s age. Both were also tall, taller even than Hoyoung himself. A number of colorful barrettes held back Nayoung’s long, thick, dark hair, and she wore an oversized, long-sleeved black shirt over a plaid skirt. The black sneakers on her feet had obviously seen better days, the sole on one held on by a strip of blue cloth patterned with small yellow stars tied around the bridge of her foot. Soyee’s hair was a lighter shade of brown and somewhat shorter than Nayoung’s, falling to her shoulders rather than the middle of her back and pulled back with a green cloth headband. She wore a faded pink shirt with a rose printed on the front, which was visibly a couple sizes too small for her, a pair of men’s cargo pants with a gigantic hole in one knee held up by a length of rope, and oversized snow boots.

Yeonho had the youngest-looking form out of all of them, appearing younger even than Gyehyeon and Mina, though maybe not quite as young as Kangmin. Shaggy dark hair fell into large, bright eyes, which crinkled almost completely shut when he smiled, showing off a mouthful of teeth as jumbled and crooked as his original form’s, if a lot less sharp. He appeared to almost be swimming in the oversized, multicolored sweater he wore, and kept having to push the sleeves up when they fell down over his hands. The brown shorts he wore seemed to fit him alright, though, even if they were holey and tattered at the hems, and his equally holey sneakers might have once been white, but were now a grimy grey color.

“There, now it’s an even playing field, and even if we do get seen, we won’t make people suspicious,” Nayoung was saying, plucking the ball out of Soyee’s hands and grabbing Yeonho by a sleeve to tug him over to one side of the lot (Hoyoung was again taken aback by how _small_ he was as a human).

“Come on,” Soyee said to Hoyoung, smiling. She led him over to the opposite side of the lot, until there was about five meters of distance between the two teams. “I like your hair, by the way. It’s very striking.”

“Oh, um. Thank you?” Hoyoung said shyly, unconsciously reaching up to tug on a pale lock, so blond it was almost white. In his distracted state, he nearly tripped over a beer bottle hidden in the grass, hissing in pain as his bare toes banged against it.

“Careful!” Soyee grabbed his shoulder to steady him. “I didn’t even realize you weren’t wearing shoes. We’ll need to find you some later.”

“It’s okay,” he hastily tried to reassure her. “I don’t use my human form much anyway, I don’t need them. You don’t need to go to all that trouble, really.”

“It’s no trouble! Here, stay on this side of the lot.” She switched places with him. “And keep an eye out to make sure you don’t step on any glass or metal, just in case. Human feet get really tender and soft if you don’t use them very much, so they need extra protection, and besides, you’re one of us now! We can’t let you hurt yourself on our watch.”

Hoyoung was so blindsided by her words that he almost got hit upside the head with the ball, and was only saved by Soyee’s quick reflexes.

“Heads in the game, guys!” Nayoung shouted, exchanging high-fives with Yeonho.

“Oh, it is _on_ ,” Soyee replied, retrieving the ball. “Think fast, Hoyoung!”

* * *

The game, such as it was, seemed to be a variation of dodge ball, where the objective was to hit the other team with the ball while not getting hit oneself. Catching the ball was permitted, but if it touched any other part of the body, it was an automatic point for the other team. The team that got to 20 points first won. Once Hoyoung got used to his human body’s center of gravity and his muscles loosened up, he found that he had a great knack for the game, able to dodge better than any of his companions. He and Soyee quickly found a rhythm where Hoyoung would dodge a thrown ball, grab it, and then toss it to her so she could retaliate before the other team knew what hit them.

“Ow!” Yeonho cried, rubbing his shoulder as the ball ricocheted off it yet again. “Okay, I call dibs, Hoyoung’s on my team next time!”

“I call recursive dibs,” Nayoung rejoined smugly as she ran to retrieve the ball.

“Soyee, Nayoung’s being pendantical again!”

“Keep bickering all you want, guys, Hoyoung is _my_ teammate,” Soyee said, looping a companionable arm around Hoyoung’s shoulders. He froze, unused to such contact, but he couldn’t deny that he liked it. Their words had made his insides feel all warm and gooey, too, and he couldn’t contain a pleased little smile. And then Nayoung hurled the ball at Soyee again. The girl dodged in the nick of time, and the ball went sailing across the lot.

“I’ll get it!” Hoyoung called, running across the grass to fetch it. As he bent to scoop it up, a tattooed hand grabbed the ball and pulled it out of his reach. Hoyoung stopped short, straightening up to see a man with blue-dyed hair dressed in ripped skinny jeans, boots, and a leather jacket looking back at him, tossing the ball back and forth between hands absolutely covered in black tattoos. Hoyoung did not like the look of the smirk on the man’s face at all, or the calculating look in his sharp, narrow eyes. They made him feel cornered. Exposed, somehow.

“Well, well, well,” the man drawled. “Look at this, Zelo. Despite our best efforts, they just keep multiplying.” He looked Hoyoung up and down disdainfully before looking past him at the other three disguised young monsters, giving a clear view of two tattooed starbursts on his throat. “Where did you brats find this one, a dumpster?”

Hoyoung took a step back instinctively, ducking his head and tangling scarred fingers together behind his back, cheeks hot, as a _very_ tall youth squeezed his long, lanky body through the opening made by a dislodged fence board. The young man paused as he took note of the four kids, and then gave a long, annoyed sigh. “How many _times_ do we have to tell you? Stay _out_ of our lot.”

“It’s not _your_ lot,” Yeonho snapped, as the other three caught up with Hoyoung. Something within the boy relaxed slightly as he felt Nayoung’s hand on his shoulder and Soyee’s presence at his back as Yeonho’s small form planted itself squarely in front of him. “I don’t see your names on it anywhere.” Two other humans followed the tall youth into the lot, significantly shorter than him, but noticeably taller than the one with blue hair, who was around the same height as Soyee. Yeonho continued without missing a beat. “We can play here if we want to.”

“I beg to differ, kid,” one of the men with brown hair said, pointing to a small, carved symbol on a nearby fencepost. Hoyoung squinted, trying to get a better look, and saw it was a stylized rabbit head wearing some kind of facemask. “Our name _is_ on here.”

“You know what he meant,” Nayoung snapped. “Now give us our ball back. That’s one thing that definitely doesn’t belong to you. Why are you here so early, anyway? Don’t you only come here after twilight? If you stuck to your schedule it wouldn’t matter if we were here or not.”

The tattooed man made no move to acquiesce to her demand or answer her question, eyes flicking from one disguised monster to another in rapid succession in a way that made Hoyoung’s whole body itch with the desire to turn and flee. Instead he asked conversationally, “Where’s your babysitter today? Mr. Tall, Dark, and Broody?”

“He’ll be here any minute,” Soyee lied smoothly. “So I suggest you give us our ball back, then we can go our separate ways, alright?”

The tattooed man considered this. “Mmm, no. I don’t think I will.

“Jongup, this wasn’t part of the pact-” began the man who hadn’t yet spoken previously, looking faintly worried.

“What Himchan and Yongguk don’t know won’t hurt them, Daehyun. You’re not going to rat us out, are you?” 

“No! I just… they’re _kids_ , Jongup-” He was rudely interrupted by Yeonho darting forward and snatching the ball away. Before he could retreat to safety, the tattooed man, presumably Jongup, lashed out and backhanded the boy hard across the face, knocking him to the ground. Yeonho landed heavily on his side with a wheeze of pain, curled protectively around the ball, and Soyee and Nayoung tensed up on either side of Hoyoung. The very air around them sang with tension.

“Little kids still have big mouths,” Jongup said, shaking his hand out and reaching into a pocket of his jacket with the other, withdrawing a large switchblade. “I’m not taking the chance of them squealing on us.” The other men followed his lead, drawing or hefting weapons of their own, though the one called Daehyun still looked conflicted. As Yeonho struggled to sit up, Jongup flicked out the blade of his knife, and Hoyoung moved almost without thinking.

Jongup reeled back with a yelp and dropped the switchblade, five bleeding gashes carved into the back of his hand. His face went completely, terrifyingly blank for a moment... and then he smiled pleasantly at Hoyoung, who now stood defensively in front of Yeonho, the nails of one hand still morphed into sharp claws. “You shouldn’t have done that, whelp.” Jongup’s voice distorted eerily, his eyes briefly flashing a pupil-less white and his skin flickering to abyssal black. “Now you’ve gone and made me _angry_.”

Hands closed around Hoyoung’s arm and propelled him toward the other end of the lot as Soyee hauled Yeonho to his feet, tucked him under her arm, and followed after the nekomata as fast as she could. Hoyoung had gotten very good at fleeing for his life in the months before finding his new home, and easily kept pace with Nayoung despite her longer legs, tearing across the grass at breakneck speed as outraged shouts and threats followed them. Once they reached the fence on the other side, Hoyoung jumped without hesitation, grabbing the rough boards and hauling himself up and over the barrier. He landed heavily on loose gravel and rocks on the other side, losing his balance and barking his knees and palms badly on the concrete. Despite the pain, he scrambled to his feet just as Nayoung snapped “Scatter!” and disappeared down a side street.

Hoyoung was sorely tempted to follow her, but, as per her instructions, continued on and turned down another street instead. Spying a trashcan that had been knocked over onto its side, he shifted and ducked into it. He huddled, trembling, at the back of the plastic container as feet pounded outside just inches away, just waiting for a face to appear at the other end of the trashcan and tattooed hands to reach in and throttle him.

However, nothing happened. He waited, heart hammering, paws throbbing, for what seemed like an eternity, but it seemed like the danger had passed him by. When he could no longer bear the suspense, he tentatively peeked out of the trashcan to survey the empty street. He then crept out and slunk off down the sidewalk, glancing around frantically for his friends, and keeping his camouflage disabled just in case they couldn’t find him otherwise. He traveled a couple blocks this way, when someone called his name.

“Hoyoung!” His head shot up, ears swiveled forward, and he saw Soyee in her human form across the street, waving her arms to get his attention. Too relieved to think twice, Hoyoung dashed across the street… right into the path of a car.

Hoyoung froze up as the speeding metal contraption bore down on him, mind going absolutely blank with terror… before hands closed around his torso. Arms hugged him so tightly that the breath was crushed out of his lungs as his unseen savior tucked into a somersault and dodged the car just in the nick of time.

“Hoyoung!” As the poor nekomata was still trying to figure out what had just happened, Soyee ran up, helped his rescuer to their feet, and snatched him out of their arms. The breath was squeezed out of him for the second time in thirty seconds. “Oh, thank you so much for rescuing him! Thank you, thank you!”

“Yeah, no problem,” said a familiar voice, breathless and shaky with nerves. “Keep your cat inside next time, though, yeah?”

Hoyoung peeked over Soyee’s arms to see Gyehyeon smoothing his rumpled uniform and mussed hair. “Absolutely,” Soyee promised fervently. “Thank you again.”

“Gyehyeon!” Mina ran up, panting, eyes wide. “Gyehyeon, oh my _God_ , that was _so cool_! You have to teach me that move later, and just _wait_ ‘til everyone hears about this at dinner! I’m glad this unnie’s cat is okay, too.” She patted Hoyoung on the head and cooed over him for a few seconds before Soyee stammered out some excuse about needing to get home and bolted off down the street, Hoyoung still held tightly in her arms.

She turned down a side street and darted behind a dumpster, crouching down and asking frantically, “Astrals, Hoyoung, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay, I think,” Hoyoung said shakily before noticing that he was getting bloody paw prints all over Soyee’s shirt from his scrapes. “Oh no, your shirt! I’m sorr-”

“Forget the shirt, your poor paws!” Soyee fretted, and to Hoyoung’s dismay, her eyes filled with tears. “Taekwoon and Hongbin are going to kill us and we’ll deserve it.” She wiped hurriedly at her eyes before hefting Hoyoung in her arms again despite his protests that he could walk, and running off down the street. “Let’s go meet up with- Yeonho!”

“Soyee!” Yeonho, still in his human form, sat on a crumbling section of wall, kicking his feet back and forth and cradling the ball he’d nearly gotten maimed to retrieve. He jumped up as Soyee approached and hugged her tightly. She patted his hair and carefully set Hoyoung on the ground.

“I’m going to see if I can find Nayoung. You two stay _right here_ until I get back, okay? Unless one of the Matoki sees you, then you run home and don’t stop for anything, got it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Yeonho said, saluting. As she ran off, Hoyoung shifted back to human, wincing as the change exacerbated the scrapes on his hands and knees. Pressure against his side made him look down in surprise to see Yeonho leaning heavily into him. “Sorry, Hoyoung. We normally don’t get into this much trouble when we go out to play, honest.” The baku turned boy looked up at him, an apologetic expression on his dirt-streaked face, a large, deep bruise already swelling one of his eyes partially shut. He brightened and held up the ball to show Hoyoung. “At least I saved the ball! We can go out again in a few days, probably.”

“Never mind that, are you okay?” Hoyoung asked, crouching beside Yeonho and checking over his face in concern. He instinctively licked a mostly undamaged patch of skin on his palm and began to scrub off a large smear of dirt on Yeonho’s cheek. “And a ball isn’t worth your life, idiot! That human - or whatever he is - could have killed you!”

“He could have, but he didn’t. You were there, after all!” Yeonho smiled his jumbled smile, the one that always made Hoyoung smile back. “Speaking of which, that was so cool, Hoyoung! You didn’t even hesitate, just _bam_!” He swiped out with one hand in a clawing motion. “You’ve always been so jumpy, who knew you had _that_ in you?”

“Not me, that’s for sure,” Hoyoung muttered, going to lick his palm again when it became clear all he was doing was smudging dirt around.

“Yeonho? Hoyoung?” an eerily familiar voice made both boys look up to see-

“Taekwoon!” Yeonho cried, face wreathed in smiles. The large, black nekomata jumped smoothly down from the adjacent roof and transformed into a tall, dark-haired man with sharp, delicate features, wearing a simple white shirt and blue jeans. He immediately rushed to them and knelt down, lightly caressing the bruise on Yeonho’s cheek and taking hold of one of Hoyoung’s scraped, bleeding hands, his worried eyes taking in the rest of their various injuries and rumpled, dirty states.

“What happened? Where are Soyee and Nayoung?” he asked as Yeonho flung himself at him and burrowed into his side, clinging to his shirt tightly.

“We were just… playing, hyung?” Yeonho tried, quailing under the unimpressed look Taekwoon gave him.

“ _Where_ , exactly, were you playing?”

“Um…” Yeonho fiddled with the hem of his sweater, looking anywhere but at Taekwoon.

Hoyoung jumped when Taekwoon’s dark, piercing eyes turned on him. “Do _you_ want to tell me where you went, Hoyoung?”

Hoyoung’s mind raced. He didn’t want to get his friends in trouble, which it looked like they might be if Taekwoon knew what they’d been doing. But he also certainly didn’t want to risk the possibility of getting on Taekwoon’s bad side. Silently apologizing to the others, he said, tentatively, “An abandoned lot? There was grass. We played with the ball there…”

Taekwoon’s eyes went wide, and he leaned back and grabbed Yeonho by the shoulders, looking… almost panicked? “Yeonho! You went to the _abandoned lot_?”

“Nayoung said it should be fine after you worked things out with the Matoki gang’s leader! And anyway, it was the middle of the day, how were we to know they would just show up out of the blue?”

“That’s not what I-!” Taekwoon made an inarticulate noise of frustration, dragging a hand down his face.

He was prevented from saying anything further by a clatter of feet coming toward them, and they all looked to see Soyee running in their direction, Nayoung held tightly in her arms. Her shirt was significantly more bloodstained than it had been previously. Hoyoung didn’t think he’d bled _that_ much earlier, but then he saw the gash on Nayoung’s paw.

“Oppa!” Soyee cried, face crumpling in relief as she spotted Taekwoon. “Oppa, they’re right behind us, they-”

In a flash, a huge, two-tailed, pitch black tiger stood where Taekwoon’s human form once had. He placed himself in front of the four young monsters as two of the men from earlier rounded the corner, Daehyun and the tall Zelo. They stopped short as they saw Taekwoon, eyes wide.

“Walk away right now, and I'll let you keep your heads,” Taekwoon growled, tails lashing back and forth dangerously.

“They’re the ones who started this,” Zelo retorted, collecting his composure with admirable speed. “They need to pay for breaking our pact.”

“What pact?” Yeonho said as Soyee paled and Nayoung laid her ears completely back. His fingers tightened on Hoyoung’s arm. “Taekwoon-hyung, what’s he talking about?” Glowing, green eyes briefly turned back toward them, and Yeonho shut his mouth with an audible click.

“It was a mistake,” Taekwoon said firmly, turning back to the men. “One that won’t happen again, I can assure you. But pact or no pact, these kittens are _mine_ , and I won’t allow you infernal creatures to touch them again. If Himchan wants restitution, he can come talk to me directly. You leave them _out_ of this.”

“That’s not how this _works_ , pussycat,” Zelo stepped forward, when a hand on his arm restrained him.

“Does everyone in this corner of this miserable planet have a freaking _death wish_?” Daehyun hissed. “Zelo, you _know_ what will happen if Himchan hears we were there ahead of schedule. _Think_ , for _two seconds_.” He turned back to Taekwoon and nodded once. “This doesn’t get back to Himchan, and we forget this happened. Deal?”

“Fine,” Taekwoon growled. “Now get _out_.”

They went, Daehyun dragging Zelo the entire way. Once they were out of sight, Taekwoon chuffed to himself. “Hmph. That’s what I thought. Their kind are so predictable.” He then seemed to deflate, shrinking back to the size of a normal adult nekomata. He turned to the four young monsters behind him, pressed together in a tight huddle and watching him with wide eyes. “Can you all make it home? Nayoung?”

“I’m okay, oppa,” she said, though her shaky tone undermined her statement somewhat. “It’s just a cut.”

“Yeonho?”

“It’s just my face, I’ll be fine,” he said quickly.

“Hoyoung?”

“Just some scrapes, hyung,” Hoyoung replied meekly. “I’ve had much worse.”

“Soyee?”

“I’m fine.”

“Alright then. So here is what we’re going to do. We are all going _straight_ home. Soyee, you put the ball away. Yonho, you go see Hongbin, get him to look at your face, make sure nothing is broken, and then send him to my room. Hoyoung, Nayoung, you two and I will sneak into Sanghyuk and Hakyeon’s room using their window. I unlocked it before I left, so it should still be open. Hongbin will look at you both, and we’re staying there until dinner. Understand?”

A chorus of affirmatives sounded around the small huddle of monsters as everyone who wasn’t already shifted did so.

“Good. And we _will_ be talking about this later. Don’t think we won’t.” Hoyoung, now in nekomata form, exchanged furtive glances with Nayoung, and a ball of icy dread took up residence in his stomach as they all headed out.

* * *

“What did you _do_?” Hongbin demanded, deep voice shrill, as he poked and prodded at Hoyoung’s scrapes and reopened injuries. “See if I ever let you leave this house again! Did I not _specifically_ tell you to stay out of trouble?! Nayoung, how could you let my patient get into such a state?”

“I’m sorry, Hongbin,” the older nekomata said, hunched into a dejected loaf on the floor under Sanghyuk’s bed, her right paw swathed in bandages. “We should have been more careful.”

“Damn right, you should’ve!”

“She’s injured, too, Hongbin,” Hoyoung tentatively mentioned. A sharp yank to his ear told him pointing this out might have been a mistake.

“You spent a month in bandages while she got a cut, I don’t think those are comparable, Hoyoung. Besides, this could all have been avoided if Nayoung and the dream-snarfers had picked _anywhere else_ to frolic, but nooooo, you had to nearly bring the wrath of the Matoki down on all our heads instead.”

Nayoung’s head dipped so low that her nose almost brushed the floorboards, and she looked so miserable that, despite his fear of Taekwoon’s possible wrath, Hoyoung felt compelled to say, “It’s not their fault; if anything I got careless, and anyway, I was the one who attacked Jongup, so it’s my fau-”

“No!” Hongbin tugged on Hoyoung’s ear again. “Nope, you do _not_ get to say this fiasco was in any way your fault! Yeonho told me his face would have gotten sliced off if it weren’t for you, and I _know_ you’re not going to sit there and call him a liar, are you?”

“No, sir,” Hoyoung muttered as Hongbin picked another speck of gravel out of his paw with a pair of tweezers. 

“Thought so.”

Meanwhile, Nayoung crept closer to where Taekwoon lay curled in his cozy nest made from rags and a discarded pillowcase. He had gone straight to it the moment he’d entered the room, and Hoyoung couldn’t blame him. Using his tiger form must have taken an obscene amount of energy, a feat Hoyoung himself wouldn’t even be remotely capable of for years yet. “Please, oppa,” She nudged his paw with her nose, meek as a mouse. “None of this is Hoyoung’s fault; please don’t be angry with him. Hongbin is right, we should have been more careful, picked some other place to play that wasn’t so potentially dangerous. We should have just run at the first sign of danger, too, ball be damned. We- _I_ got cocky. I’m sorry. If anyone deserves to be punished for this, it’s me.”

Taekwoon studied her for a long moment, and Hoyoung’s heartbeat sped up reflexively. Just because Taekwoon hadn’t ever acted violently towards either of them before didn’t mean even he didn’t have limits. Had this finally pushed him too far? As Hoyoung pondered this, Taekwoon reached out a paw toward Nayoung, and Hoyoung stopped breathing for a moment before he registered that the elder monster’s claws were sheathed.

“I’m not angry with you, kitten,” Taekwoon said quietly, patting Nayoung gently on her bowed head. “Any of you,” he added, looking directly at Hoyoung. “Disappointed, yes. Scared out of at least two months of my life, absolutely. Part of this is also my fault, though. I should have been clearer on why you weren’t to go to the abandoned lot and given you a proper update on the situation instead of just assuming you would take my previous word for it and stay away, especially since you all had a new friend you wanted to impress. I didn’t want to burden you with the things that are my responsibility to take care of.”

“I should honestly just ground you _all_ and be done with it,” muttered Hongbin, finally putting down the tweezers and slathering some ointment over Hoyoung’s paws, shooting all three larger monsters an extremely unimpressed look. “I’ll get the item ghosts, Haebin, and Yongseung to back me up, too, see if I won’t. Accident-prone disasters, the lot of you.”

“Yes, we’re terrible,” Taekwoon agreed, winking at both younger nekomata. Hoyoung felt something inside his chest uncoil at the sight, and tentatively smiled back. “But all’s well that ends well, right? As long as you kittens consider your lesson learned, I’m willing to put this matter behind us.”

“Thank you, oppa!” Nayoung perked up and nuzzled Taekwoon’s cheek gratefully before becoming glum again. “Still, I am really sorry your first outing with us had to end like this, Hoyoung. We wanted to make it special for you, and then all this happens. Stupid infernals, ruining everything.”

“It’s okay,” Hoyoung said hastily, unable to bear the sight of his usually-bubbly friend looking so downcast. “I had fun. Really. I’ve never played ball before, but I liked it a lot.”

Nayoung’s jaw dropped. “There’s no _way_ you’ve never played ball before! You’re messing with me!”

“Honest, I haven’t.”

Nayoung buried her face in her paws and said, her voice muffled, “I’m undergoing a paradigm shift, give me a second.”

“I take it he’s good?” Taekwoon said, looking deeply amused.

“Good? He’s _incredible_ , oppa, you should have _seen_ him!” It was Hoyoung’s turn to hide his face in his paws.

“Is he, now? Well then, I’ll have to make sure to catch him in action next time.”

_Next time._ Hoyoung liked the sound of that.

* * *

**_Notes:_ **

_\- Infinite’s[Dongwoo](https://kimseongkyu.tumblr.com/post/152022322197/vixxfinite-dongwoo-taekwoons-friendship) and [Sunggyu](https://kimseongkyu.tumblr.com/post/173778140119/vixxfinite-i-really-like-sunggyu-hyung) are apparently good friends with Leo irl, so I wanted to give that a brief shoutout here. Dongwoo is a hippocamp because he thinks the animal he resembles most is a hippopotamus, and Sunggyu is a nix, a type of water sprite/nature spirit. XD I imagine the rest of Infinite live in or around the same general area as the abandoned pool as well, either as humans or other monsters._

_\- B.A.P.’s characterization and appearences in this AU is based on their characters in the[Skydive MV](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VEZuvy0-cc), which is why 1) Himchan is the leader, and 2) they are not the soft, good boys we all know and love. And of course they are supernatural creatures here as well; come on, their canonical Kpop origin story is that they’re [shapeshifting alien rabbits](https://64.media.tumblr.com/63103307790c8446a495af61188fd56f/tumblr_nwt2hqtOiY1rnkj5ho1_r2_1280.jpg), how could they not be? They may or may not be rabbits in this AU, though; no one really knows what they are, exactly, since no one that has gotten a good glimpse of their true forms has lived to tell about it. They’re from the infernal plane and hence thrive on chaos, as opposed to creatures from the celestial plane (such as Hongbin), which thrive on order. Also - Moon Jongup irl: quiet, soft, longsuffering, a weird boi, smol, must protec. _ _Moon Jongup in the Skydive MV: one of the most imminently punchable and creepy assholes in any Kpop MV to date._

_\- Nayoung and Soyee are both considered rather tall for Korean girls, being 169cm (5’6 ½”) and 172 (5’8”) respectively. Also, if you want visual reference for everyone’s human forms thus far:_   
_[Hoyoung](https://preview.redd.it/xbrxnk3000651.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0dc2458049b229f9305f4d8f4364dbdbd9a02da4)_   
_[Nayoung](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/38/55/68/385568cc6cb83aa416f770fc47785d01.jpg)_   
_[Yeonho](https://64.media.tumblr.com/77e1b6a80bee618e711d9e68c1605a2b/tumblr_pmagohgtP81xf4kauo1_1280.jpg)_   
_[Soyee](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/03/07/9e/03079efeed7e0a0ee387fb0be17e4680.jpg) _   
_[Taekwoon](https://64.media.tumblr.com/09552b2975541bb557bafb5214dd43f5/tumblr_pcccjgHb5c1u5hp0no2_500.jpg) _

_\- Hoyoung[reall](https://youtu.be/ZYuPUiZPHSY?t=140)[y likes playing games irl](https://youtu.be/ZYuPUiZPHSY?t=140) and as far as I can tell, is scarily good at most of them._

_\- South Korea as a society does not have a good track record when it comes to their orphan and foster care system. Ancestry and bloodlines are a defining part of Korean society, and records tracing one’s ancestry back hundreds of years are treasured and idolized; these records can even affect one’s chances of obtaining a job, relationships, and more. This is why domestic adoptions make up only 4% of all adoptions in Korea, and why, with no bloodline to trace, orphans are considered the lowest caste of Korean society, treated as “nonpersons,” invisible, shunned, and unwanted. Orphanages are generally overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded, and those who age out of the adoption system are prone to getting taken advantage of and able only to get the most menial and low-paying of jobs, as they commonly have little to no education and no resources to better their circumstances. More information on the plight of South Korean orphans can be found[here](https://thegroundtruthproject.org/korean-orphans-languish-system-tradition-new-laws-make-adoption-difficult/), [here](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-30692127), and [here](https://www.holtinternational.org/blog/2019/05/love-beyond-the-orphanage/)._


	3. Self

“What do you _mean_ , you can’t help me in the garden?” Yongseung pouted.

“I mean,” Hoyoung said patiently from his crouched position on the windowsill where he was enjoying some afternoon sun, “Hongbin will string me up by the tails if I don’t let my paws heal at least a little before covering them in dirt.”

“At least he doesn’t have to wear bandages this time,” Dongheon pointed out from his perch on a cabbage leaf. “And if you really need something, you know I can always shift, sprout.”

“I know, I know,” Yongseung sighed, crouching on the grass and doodling little designs in the soil with a gnarled finger. “I was just looking forward to it, is all. It’s not every day someone volunteers to work in my garden. But I’d take a delay over Hoyoung being a smear on the pavement.”

“That makes two of us,” Hoyoung replied, a cold shiver running down his spine despite the warm sunshine.

“Hey, hey, tell the part about Taekwoon turning into a two-tailed tiger again,” Dongheon said eagerly, wings buzzing in his excitement. “I never get to see him transform, and it sounds so cool!”

“Sounds _scary_ , more like,” Yongseung corrected, sitting on the grass beside the garden and folding his legs under him. “Can you do that, too, Hoyoung?”

“ _Me_?” Hoyoung laughed in shock. “No, not for a long time. It takes at _least_ twelve years before a nekomata is able to store enough magic for that kind of feat. I’m surprised one of the others hasn’t told you before now.”

“I never even knew nekomata could do something like that until yesterday,” Yongseung pouted again. “It’s not like I just magically know what all of you are capable of. I’m still trying to figure out what I can and can’t do myself. Like here, look.” He held out a hand, and as Hoyoung and Dongheon watched, one of his fingers turned from a wooden texture to smooth, pale, human skin. “I did that by accident a few days ago. I can still only change one finger at a time, but apparently this means I could pass myself off as a real human when I get old enough if I had to. I… I didn’t even know my kind could _do_ that. At least you grew up around other members of your species to give you some idea of what to expect.”

“None of these trees are awake? There aren’t any other nature spirits around for you to talk to?” Hoyoung asked, glancing at the trees dotting the block. Yongseung shook his head glumly.

“Ah, who needs trees when you have us?” Dongheon said, buzzing over and alighting on the tip of Yongseung’s finger. “We’ll help you figure it out, won’t we, Hoyoung?”

“Of course!” Hoyoung said, nodding earnestly. Yongseung started to smile, but before he could respond, a faint chatter of voices from around the corner had all three monsters looking up and around in alarm.

“They’re home? Already?” Dongheon said, taking flight and zipping back inside the house as Hoyoung activated his camouflage and shuffled back so Yongseung could slam the window shut. The drus then dissolved into a small shower of leaves and petals just as Mina and Kangmin came into view, followed by-

“Gyehyeon?” Hoyoung said aloud in surprise. “What is he doing here? Didn’t Minchan have a babysitting job today?”

“He should,” Dongheon said, perching on Hoyoung’s ear as the gate opened with a creak of rusty hinges. “Maybe he’s just here for a visit?”

Gyehyeon and Mina began coming through the grass of the yard as if searching for something, while Kangmin continued into the house. Hoyoung skittered under the bed as Dongheon dove behind the piano. With a clatter of footsteps, Kangmin burst into the bedroom. He dropped to his knees and peered under first Minchan’s bed, then his own, then the dresser, then the piano, and then the desk. Finally, he opened the closet and rifled around inside it, pulling out a few boxes and pairs of shoes and boots. Meanwhile, Hoyoung huddled at the far end of the bed in his nest, trying to stay as unobtrusive as possible.

As Kangmin began to put the boxes and shoes back in the closet, Gyehyeon burst through the door. “Find anything?” he said breathlessly.

“No, hyung,” Kangmin said apologetically. “I looked under the beds, and the dresser, _and_ the piano, and even in the closet, but I didn’t see anything like your puzzle piece necklace.”

“No, it has to be here, it _has_ to!” Gyehyeon dropped to his knees and started pulling things out from under Minchan’s bed indiscriminately. “There isn’t anywhere else it could be, if it’s not at the road where that dumb cat almost got run over, then it has to be here! I have to find it, I _have_ to find it, I-!”

“Could you maybe get another one?” Kangmin interjected timidly, standing awkwardly near the closet as the older boy frantically tore his room apart.

“I _can’t_ get another one, Gyehyeon snapped. “It was _mine_ , hyung _gave_ it to me, he…” Gyehyeon had run out of things to pull out from under Minchan’s bed and knelt in the middle of the floor, panting hard. “He… it was all I had left, I can’t… I… And now I _lost_ it, like the _idiot_ I am-!” His shoulders hunched, and visibly began to tremble, before abruptly burying his face in his hands with a choked-off sob.

This galvanized Kangmin into motion, and he rushed to Gyehyeon’s side. “Hyung, don’t cry! I’m sure we can find it, and if we can’t, I’m sure we could find or make something like-”

“You _can’t_. It was all I had _left_ of them, don’t you get it?”

“Who, hyung?”

For a long moment, Gyehyeon didn’t reply. Finally, he said, in a voice so quiet that even Hoyoung could barely hear, “My… hyung. My noona.”

Kangmin’s eyes widened. “You have siblings?”

“Had. But yes. I did. We lived… a lot of different places, when I was a kid. Under a few bridges, a playground, a school basement. My favorite was an old boxcar. I don’t remember my parents, but then again, I can’t really remember anything before I was five years old, so it’s probably… for the best. My siblings would never talk about them, even when I asked, so it was probably bad, whatever it was. My hyung would go out every day to work and bring back food and other things we needed, and my noona would look after me while we looked through dumpsters and garbage cans for things we could take back home. It was a hard life, but even so, that was the happiest I can ever remember being. We even got to go to a festival once; my hyung won the poetry contest and got a set of three necklaces that formed a heart when you put the pieces together as a prize. He said… he said it was how our hearts would always be one, even when we were apart. And then my noona teased him the rest of the day for being so cheesy.”

He huffed a short laugh and fell silent for a long moment before finally continuing. “And then… one day, hyung never came back. We waited and waited for him, but our food ran out, and when noona went to go find some, someone called child services on her. She was put into a foster home. I… wasn’t. I probably won’t ever be. But I always hoped… that maybe, when I grew up, I could find her somehow. Find my hyung. That thought was the only thing that made life bearable, but now…” He trailed off.

“But you can still find them, hyung,” Kangmin said earnestly, putting a hand on Gyehyeon’s shoulder. “You don’t need a necklace to do that.”

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Gyehyeon shook him off, turning away stubbornly. “That necklace was tangible proof someone wanted me at some point. Someone cared. And if… if I found them again… I’d _belong_ somewhere again. We’d be complete again. But I guess that’s something a kid like you wouldn’t understand.”

Kangmin slowly withdrew his hand, glancing away as well and biting his lip. He sat on the floor and leaned back against Minchan’s bed, pulling his knees up to his chest. “I do understand, hyung.”

Gyehyeon scoffed. “No, you don’t.”

“I _do_ ,” Kangmin said firmly. He pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to reveal a bracelet around his left wrist, woven in intricate patterns with various shades of thin, blue cords. “Hakyeon-hyung gave me this the first time I met him and Hana-noona at the orphanage. He made it, just for me. He had a red one, and Hana had a purple one. When I met Sanghyuk and Minchan and Mina, they each had a bracelet, too.”

That got Gyehyeon’s attention. He turned in surprise, giving Hoyoung a clear view of his face. “Orphanage? But… I thought…”

“My mom… wasn’t a good person, hyung. I loved her, and I know she loved me, too, but she did… a lot of bad things, and the police finally caught up with her. Of course, you can’t put a five year old in jail, and she didn’t have any other family, so they sent me to an orphanage after they took her away.” Kangmin fiddled absently with his bracelet, turning it around and around on his wrist as his gaze became distant. “I don’t… like thinking about that time very much, and like you, there’s a lot I just… don’t remember anymore. But I do remember always being hungry, because there were too many kids and not enough food. Not enough staff, either. The older kids would…” He trailed off and swallowed, hard, before he could speak again, “would go to new kids in the middle of the night when they cried too loudly, cover them in blankets, and hit them with baseball bats until they stopped. So I got really good at not making any noise when I cried myself to sleep every night.”

“Kangmin…” Gyehyeon looked stricken.

“It’s okay, though,” Kangmin said hurriedly, wiping at his eyes and smiling widely. “Because my hyungs and noonas found me. I could barely believe it, but even if they didn’t know me, they wanted to take me home, officially take custody of me. Even though they couldn’t take me home for a long time, they visited me every week, and those visits kept me going. When they had to leave, I could still look at my bracelet and know that someone out there wanted me. That I… belonged somewhere. So yeah. I do understand, hyung.” He gripped his wrist tightly. “Even though Hakyeon-hyung or Mina-noona could just make me another one, I would be heartbroken if I lost this bracelet.”

Gyehyeon opened his mouth to reply, but before he could, Kangmin continued, “But even if I did, that wouldn’t change how my siblings feel about me, or how I feel about them.” He gazed up at Gyehyeon earnestly. “I’m sure your siblings are the same, hyung. They’ll care about you whether or not you have your necklace.”

Gyehyeon looked away. “You can’t… you can’t know that.”

“Yes, I can,” Kangmin said firmly. “ _I_ care about you whether or not you have that necklace. We all do. You may not be related to us, it’s true, but we _like_ having you around, hyung. And we would be so sad if you just disappeared and we never saw you again. And if that’s just us, your friends, your siblings must miss you so much more. So you see? You don’t have anything to worry about.” He smiled brightly, but upon seeing Gyehyeon’s expression, his face fell. “Hyung? Are you oka- OOF!” He wheezed as Gyehyeon grabbed him up in a tight, desperate hug. Kangmin’s eyes went wide for a few seconds, and then grew soft and misty, and he patted Gyehyeon’s back gently as it began to heave with silent sobs.

Movement near the door caught Hoyoung’s eye. Mina hovered near the partially-open door, biting her lip as a tear trickled down her cheek. As Hoyoung watched, she reached up and ran a finger across one of the many bracelets around one of her own wrists. It was identical to Kangmin’s other than its color, which was green instead of blue. Without saying a word or alerting the two boys to her presence, she turned and tiptoed away.

* * *

At dinner that night, Hoyoung noticed that everyone made an especial effort to cheer Gyehyeon up and make him feel included, as well as assure him that they’d keep an eye out for his missing necklace. Hakyeon and Hana snuck him choice morsels of food, Minchan and Mina told funny story after funny story, Sanghyuk asked after his grades and gave him advice on algebra, and Kangmin stuck to his side like glue. Gyehyeon, for his part, seemed more than slightly overwhelmed with all the attention, if also quite touched, but nothing managed to lift his spirits very much, and he was subdued for the duration of the meal.

“Are you okay, Hoyoung?” Nayoung whispered to him as the humans started to disperse from the table, swallowing her last mouthful of affection. “You’ve barely touched your food.”

“Huh?” Hoyoung glanced down at the small pile of bubbles, sparkles, and curlicues he’d amassed in front of him. “Oh, um, just not very hungry today, I guess.” Hoyoung was honestly surprised he’d managed to choke _anything_ down that evening, given how his stomach churned constantly with guilt. It was _his_ fault that Gyehyeon lost his treasured necklace, after all. If he’d just paid a little more attention to his surroundings while crossing the street, none of this would have happened. Despite all his best efforts, he always somehow managed to mess everything up.

But no. This was _not_ the time to mope around feeling sorry for himself. Glancing down at his food, Hoyoung took a deep breath and then a big bite, forcing himself to chew and swallow. He was going to find that necklace tomorrow, if it was the last thing he did, and to do that, he’d need all the energy he could get.

* * *

“And just _where_ do you think you’re going, bedbug?” Hoyoung froze in his kneeling position atop the dresser, midway through opening the bedroom window. He glanced over to find Dongheon sitting on the piano stool in his humanoid form, a knowing look in his golden compound eyes.

“Um…”

“Ah ah ah, save it.” Dongheon raised one black, segmented hand. “I already know what you’re going to say. I was there in the room yesterday, too, you know. Honestly, you’re so predictable, Hoyoung.”

“You can’t stop me, Dongheon!” Hoyoung said stubbornly, opening the window the rest of the way and transforming back into a nekomata. “Gyehyeon lost his necklace saving me from that car, so it’s my responsibility to at least try to get it back for him.”

“ _Idiot_.” Dongheon reached out and thumped Hoyoung lightly on the head. “When are you going to learn that you don’t have to do everything by yourself anymore, huh? Did you think what I said to Yongseung yesterday in the garden applied only to him? When anyone in this house has as problem, we help them figure it out. And if you think I’m going to let you go out into this neighborhood alone in your condition, you’re sorely mistaken.”

“But-!”

“I’d go with you, but unfortunately, I’m as tied to this house as much as Yongseung is. So, the next best thing would be to go talk to Taekwoon. He knows this area better than anyone.”

“I can’t do that!” Hoyoung protested.

Dongheon gave him a flat look. “And why not?”

“I just…” Hoyoung wrapped his tail around his scarred, scraped paws and looked away. “Something like this… I’d be bothering him. He already had to save us yesterday, and-”

“And did he seem to hold that against you? Did he tell you ‘Hoyoung, you’re such a bother, I never want you to talk to me unless it’s about inoffensive or inconsequential things, and forget about saving your life next time, you’re on your own’?”

“Well… no, but-”

“But _nothing_. Go talk to Taekwoon, Hoyoung. If he doesn’t agree to help you, I’ll let Yongseung fill a jar with beetles from the yard next to ours and dump them all over me. This is a once in a lifetime offer, so you better get it over with.” With that, Dongheon scooped Hoyoung up, carried him over to the bedroom door, put him down just outside, and shut it, the lock engaging with a pointed _click_.

Hoyoung stood in the middle of the short hallway between the younger boys’ and the girls’ bedrooms, still processing what had just happened. He glanced at the door to Sanghyuk and Hakyeon’s bedroom. After a moment of weighing his options, he gathered his courage and began to walk.

* * *

Taekwoon listened to Hoyoung’s halting request for assistance in finding Gyehyeon’s necklace for all of thirty seconds before the older monster was chivvying him out the bedroom window with a wink and a “Don’t tell Hongbin.” Astonished that it could possibly be that easy, Hoyoung allowed himself to be led through the yard and to the street, making sure to be careful of his still-healing paws. Some small part of him felt just the tiniest bit disappointed that he wouldn’t be able to see Dongheon’s reaction to getting covered in beetles, but upon reflection, it was probably best for all involved that they’d avoided that outcome.

Despite their best efforts, however, the two nekomata didn’t find anything that day.

* * *

Or the next.

* * *

Or the next.

* * *

“So,” Mina began at dinner that night. “At school, there’s a-”

“Finish chewing first, please,” Hakyeon said mildly, placing the last piece of grilled fish onto Kangmin’s plate. Mina glared, but did as she was told.

“As I was _saying_ ,” she said after swallowing. “In homeroom at school, they have a calendar with everyone’s birthdays written on it, and I saw it’s Gyehyeon’s birthday next week. I think we should do something for him.”

“Mina-” Hana began, but Mina cut her off, saying all in a rush,

“It doesn’t have to be big, or fancy, or expensive! It’s just that he’s probably not going to get anything that day aside from us singing happy birthday in class, certainly not any kind of party. It would do a lot to cheer him up, and he’s over at our house so much already, and he’s helped me so much, and I know you all really like him, and-”

“Mina!” Hana said, louder. When the girl paused to look at her, she smiled. “I was going to say, I’ll make seaweed soup.”

Mina sprang up to hug her gratefully. “Thank you, unnie!”

“We can use some of my babysitting money to get one of those fancy cupcakes from the bakery near the middle school,” Minchan offered. “If we just get one, it won’t be a huge expense.”

“Oh yeah!” Kangmin said energetically. “Their cupcakes are the _best_ ; the strawberry shortcake one you got me back in January was my favorite!”

“You’ll have to find a way to ask Gyehyeon what his favorite cake flavor is without seeming suspicious,” Minchan continued. “So I don’t accidentally get him something he’ll hate. It’d be just my luck if I got him red velvet and he happens to not like it.”

“As if anyone could hate red velvet cake,” Sanghyuk said between slurps of his noodles.

“You never know,” Minchan said sagely.

“Do you think he might like one of my candles?” Hakyeon asked hopefully. “I have a couple spares.”

“Lame, hyung! That’s an _old_ _person_ present,” Minchan said cheekily, deftly dodging the neck chop Hakyeon aimed at him in retaliation.

“Not to mention a possible fire hazard,” Hana said, practical as ever. “The orphanage might not allow it.”

As their eldest pouted sulkily, Kangmin leaned over and consolingly patted his arm. “It’s okay, hyung, it was a good idea! Maybe a succulent could work instead if you have a spare one?”

Hakyeon looked thoughtful. “I do have a couple runt succulents and a baby cactus that could use some extra TLC…”

“That’s perfect!” Kangmin beamed before his face fell slightly and he tentatively asked, “Do you think maybe one of my Hot Wheels cars would be a good enough present? I know it’s not much, but I don't really have anything else I could give, so I thought that maybe…”

“It’s a _great_ present, Kangminnie,” Hakyeon assured him immediately, ruffling his hair as everyone else echoed the sentiment, bringing back the boy's cheery grin. 

“Oppa, can you use the printers at school to print out some party decorations?” Mina asked Sanghyuk. “I found some simple free ones online that we could use.”

Sanghyuk paused with his chopsticks halfway up to his mouth as all eyes turned to him. “Mina, you know I could get in trouble if I use the printer too much. I was banned from touching it for a whole month because of that Christmas party you wanted to throw last year.”

“Pleeeeeease, oppa?” Mina begged, clasping her hands entreatingly. "I promise I won't ask you for anything from the printer again!" Kangmin and Minchan immediately mirrored her pose and expression.

Sanghyuk stood no chance against combined force of their puppy dog eyes and gave in with a put-upon sigh. “Alright, _fine_ , I’ll talk to Sungjae and Jimin, we’ll see what we can do.”

“Thank you, oppa!”

“And what are you doing, noona?” Kangmin asked, stuffing the last of his grilled fish in his mouth.

“It’s a secret,” Mina said loftily, and no matter how much Minchan and Kangmin cajoled her, she wouldn't say another word about it for the rest of the meal.

* * *

Hoyoung and Taekwoon renewed their search for Gyehyeon’s necklace the next day. Hoyoung was more determined than ever to find it, hopefully in time for the human’s birthday. As Hoyoung had gotten well acquainted with the neighborhood and surrounding areas in the past few days, he and Taekwoon briefly split up to cover more ground (with the stern stipulation from Taekwoon that he was to stay out of trouble and run straight home at the first sign of danger).

Hoyoung skittered down the street, camouflage engaged. As he dodged pedestrians, he kept his eyes peeled for any sign of a necklace with a puzzle piece pendant. And then, he almost walked straight into a streetlight pole as he caught sight of something across the street.

A tall man walked briskly down the sidewalk, dressed in an incredibly odd, piecemeal assortment of clothing in various states of disrepair, including a long, faux leather overcoat trimmed with black feathers of all things. At least one ring sparkled on every one of his fingers, and a number of bracelets and necklaces adorned his wrists and neck. Bright, observant eyes observed the world from beneath a shaggy fringe of black hair and above a prominent nose and full, expressive mouth. In front of him, the man pushed an old shopping festooned with strings of beads, keys, lights, and other baubles and piled high with various boxes and bags and containers. And there, in a random box precariously perched on the side of the cart, between a cracked china dog figurine and a Ziploc bag filled with bottle caps, sat a familiar necklace with a puzzle piece pendant. 

Hoyoung glanced around wildly, hoping to catch sight of Taekwoon, but the older nekomata was nowhere to be found. The man with the shopping cart rounded the corner of the block, and Hoyoung wasted not another second of time. In desperation, he dashed across the street and chased after him. 

* * *

**_Notes:_ **

_\- Parts of Kangmin’s story were directly inspired by[this account](https://news.yahoo.com/alternate-lives-korean-orphans-quests-answers-000008722.html) of a Korean orphan who aged out of the system._

_\- Gyehyeon's and his siblings' necklaces look something[like this](https://i.pinimg.com/564x/4a/31/1c/4a311c58623e42379441914b266ad78b.jpg) when all the pieces are assembled, just in case anyone wanted a visual reference._


	4. Way of Life

Hoyoung followed the odd, raggedy man into an alleyway, where he parked the overloaded shopping cart beside a dumpster and began busily rooting around inside, seemingly oblivious to the smell and filth. Hoyoung crept closer, trying to figure out how to snatch the necklace without attracting attention. As he was just about to make a break for it, the man pulled a metal ladle out of the dumpster, which had been twisted into a circular shape. The man looked at the piece of junk like he’d struck gold, grinning from ear to ear. He then removed the lid of a plastic bin lashed to the bottom rack of the shopping cart and shoved the ladle inside before moving on down the alley, humming a jaunty little tune under his breath all the while. 

He repeated the same ritual from dumpster to dumpster while Hoyoung trailed behind him like a persistent shadow, looking for an opportune moment to grab the necklace and skedaddle. One never came, however, and after two hours had passed, Hoyoung was beginning to get desperate. As he was contemplating just rushing in, caution be damned, the man came to a halt under a crumbling overpass beside an abandoned park. Leaving the cart beside one of the columns unattended, he crossed into the bushes on the other side. When he didn’t reappear for a few minutes, Hoyoung seized his chance.

He crept over to the shopping cart as quietly as he possibly could, slinking from dappled shadow to dappled shadow. Finally, he reached the cart and looked in dismay at the box high up out of his reach, a silver chain dangling over one side. He shifted to his human form to make use of its longer arms and opposable thumbs, and reached for the chain, heart pounding in his ears. Just as his fingertips brushed it, a large, long-fingered hand clamped tightly around his wrist.

“Ah _ha_! So _you’re_ the one who’s been following me for the last couple hours!” A jolt of terror ran down the entire length of Hoyoung’s spine as he looked up to see the tall man glaring down at him sternly. “And can’t you read?”

Hoyoung was unceremoniously yanked to his feet and around to the front of the cart, where a small, painted wooden sign had been affixed, which read in childishly scrawled script, clouds and stars and flowers decorating the border, “Property of Jaehwan, do not touch except for Jaehwan!” The man, presumably Jaehwan, stabbed a finger at each of the words as he read them aloud, and then yanked Hoyoung back around so he could grab the necklace out of the box, away from Hoyoung’s reach.

“Best shiny I’ve found this entire year, and just a few days after I find it, people are _already_ trying to steal it from me! Isn’t that just my luck!” Hoyoung cried out in pain and shock as Jaewhan flicked him hard on the forehead. “Didn’t your dam ever teach you that stealing is wrong?”

“Please!” Hoyoung said as soon as he could get a word in edgewise. “Please, I wasn’t trying to steal it, it belongs to someone I know! He lost it, and I was trying to get it back for him!”

“Uh-huh, nice try.” Jaehwan rolled his eyes and finally released his tight grip on Hoyoung’s wrist, shoving him away. “I wasn’t born yesterday, little thief. Now run along.”

Hoyoung stumbled back a few steps from the force of the shove before he caught himself. He was sorely tempted to do as the man said, but he somehow managed to stand his ground. “It’s the truth!” He pointed to the necklace hanging tantalizingly from Jaehwan’s hand. “The person that belongs to, he lost it just a few days ago. I’ve been looking for it all this time. Please, you have to believe me!”

“Why should I?” snapped the man. “You already tried to steal from me. I wouldn’t put lying past you, especially someone of your ilk, _emotion eater_. Your kind is so predictable, saying or doing anything just to leech the happiness off the closest human being. And hey, I’m not judging; we all do what we have to in order to survive – fish gotta swim, birds gotta eat and all that – but I draw the line when someone tries to swipe one of my shinies. Especially one as rare as this.” He gave the necklace a little shake. “Why, it’s one of the best ones in my entire collection! And _you_ are not getting your grubby little paws on it, thank you very much!”

Hoyoung’s mind had gone completely blank. Once he found his tongue, he stammered out, “Wha- how did you know-?”

“You might be surprised, little thief, at how many things I know,” Jaehwan said cryptically. “Now scram, kitty cat, I have things to do.”

With that, he turned away, and with a quick flash of light, a large crow stood in place of the man, Gyehyeon’s necklace still held firmly in one of its talons. With a raucous caw, the crow took flight. As the light caught its feathers, they turned from a plain black to a sifting kaleidoscope of stunning, iridescent colors… and then the crow disappeared over the ledge formed by one of the beams making up the overpass, where a large, messy nest had been constructed out of twigs, straw, cloth, and various bits of trash.

Hoyoung stared at the spot where the crow had disappeared, mouth slightly agape, still reeling from the events of the past two minutes. But he couldn’t let it end like this, he couldn’t! “Wait!”

A loud, dramatic groan sounded from the ledge, echoing faintly off the ceiling of the overpass. “Just give it a rest already, little thief!”

At the end of his rope, Hoyoung blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I’ll trade you for it!”

A long moment of silence fell. Finally, Jaehwan poked his head over the side of his nest, bright, silvery blue eyes regarding Hoyoung shrewdly, and he asked, “What have you got?”

Hoyoung scrambled for a reply, as he hadn’t really expected to get this far. “I… I don’t have anything on me right now. Could I come back this time tomorrow?” As Jaewhan tapped his beak with a wing in thought, Hoyoung added in desperation, “Please, just give me this one chance! I’m sorry for trying to take the necklace without speaking to you first, it’s just really important that I get it back!”

Something in Hoyoung’s tone must have convinced Jaehwan, because after a few more moments of intent staring, he finally shrugged. “If you’re really that desperate, then sure, show me what you got, and I’ll see if a trade is worth my while. No tricks though! You come _alone_ with the goods, or the deal is off, got it?”

“Yes, sir, thank you, sir,” Hoyoung nodded vigorously and bowed gratefully. He might still be able to salvage this!

“Good, now get going.” Jaehwan said, flapping a large, shimmery wing at Hoyoung. Hoyoung didn’t think it would be wise to test this strange monster’s patience; he shifted and bolted back the way he’d come as fast as his legs could carry him.

His mind raced as he ran, and the crushing weight of reality began to extinguish the brief spark of hope that had kindled in his chest. What had he been _thinking_ , offering to trade for Gyehyeon’s necklace? The only thing in the world he had to his name was a little candy wrapper, and surely even a monster as strange and eccentric as Jaehwan wouldn’t trade a necklace for that. What even _was_ he? Hoyoung had never even heard of a monster species matching Jaehwan’s description before. Even if there was the possibility that perhaps he’d take something else in exchange for the necklace, how was he to know what that something else was without knowing what kind of monster he even was?

There was nothing for it, Hoyoung reflected glumly. He’d have to talk to Taekwoon about this. Of course, in order to talk to Taekwoon, Hoyoung would have to find him, first… Well, at least he’d been paying attention to the route Jaehwan had taken to get here. It should take way less time getting home than it had coming the other way.

Sure enough, after about forty-five minutes of skittering, running, and walking, Hoyoung found himself in surroundings that were somewhat familiar. Now to just find-

“Hoyoung? What are you doing way out here?”

Ah, speak of the proverbial devil, and there he was, perched atop an overturned trashcan. Overcome with a sudden rush of sheer relief, Hoyoung ran forward and met Taekwoon just as he jumped off the trashcan to the street, burying his face in the elder’s soft, black fur.

“Hoyoung?” Taekwoon said again, nuzzling him back before retreating a pace to get a better look at him. “Are you alright? Did something happen?”

Hoyoung took a deep breath… and told him everything. “-I’m sorry if offering to trade him for the necklace was a mistake, hyung,” he said in closing. “I just… couldn’t think of anything else to do. He’s powerful. I could tell. And way bigger than me in both forms. There was no way I’d win against him in a fight, and-”

“Don’t apologize,” Taekwoon soothed, nuzzling him again. “You did your best.”

Reassured, Hoyoung continued, “Do you know what kind of monster he might be? I was hoping that maybe… if we knew what he was… we would have a better chance of knowing what would persuade him to give the necklace up.”

“I don’t,” Taekwoon said somberly, and Hoyoung’s heart sank. “I’ve never come across a monster like the one you described before. But just because I haven’t doesn’t mean the same goes for the others. Come on.” He prodded Hoyoung into a brisk trot. “We’ll hold a meeting first thing tomorrow.”

* * *

“Why do we always have to have family meetings so _early_?” Soyee yawned, rubbing her eyes tiredly as Yeonho listed bonelessly into her side, snoring lightly. Nayoung, sitting daintily beside them, swatted him on the arm.

“I’m awake!” he shouted, sitting up straight and looking around him bleary-eyed at the packed kitchen. “I’m awake! I didn’t miss anything!”

“Good, because we haven’t even started yet,” Yongseung said dryly, sitting cross-legged on Soyee’s other side.

“Oh,” Yeonho said, wilting back into Soyee’s side and burying his face in her thick fur. “Wake me up when we do, then…”

“Better get started, guys,” Dongheon said from where he’d leaned up against the wall where the hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms began, unable to go any further from his piano but unwilling to miss the meeting entirely. “You’ll lose the baku otherwise.”

“You’re up, kitten,” Taekwoon said quietly, nudging Hoyoung forward with a paw. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Hoyoung described his encounter with Jaehwan as succinctly as possible.

“I’ve never heard of a monster like that,” Nayoung said doubtfully after Hoyoung had finished. There was a chorus of similar sentiments and most of the other monsters just looked very confused. All except for Haebin, who seemed to be deep in thought.

“Did he have a name for the things he collected?” she spoke up suddenly from her perch on the kitchen table next to Xiening.

“Um.” Hoyoung had no idea what that had to do with anything, but, “Yes, he called the necklace a ‘shiny,’ I think.”

“Ah,” Haebin said knowingly. “He must be an omen, then.”

“But…” Hoyoung was completely baffled. “But omens look like ravens. And they don’t have human forms. Aren’t they harbingers of doom, too?”

“Wrong, wrong, and wrong again,” she said, leaning back on her little forepaws and kicking her dangling hind legs back and forth as she spoke. “They can look like any member of the corvid family. Jays, nutcrackers, jackdaws, magpies, crows, you name it. I know, because an omen lived in the plum tree in front of the house I manifested in, and _she_ looked like a magpie. She also definitely had a human form, I saw it on multiple occasions. And it’s a common misconception omens bring bad luck or foretell disaster. I mean, _some_ do, but that’s only if they’re a bad sort or someone royally pisses them off. There are plenty of good omens, too. The roof never leaked while my friend lived in front of the house, for example, and there were a lot fewer weeds in the garden and lawn than all the other neighbors had. The humans’ car never broke down, either, even though it was old enough that it should have been falling apart by then. When winter rolled around, only one of the kids ever got sick, and she’d always had delicate health to begin with. I could go on.”

“Why does the fact that the necklace thief calls his finds ‘shinies’ make you so sure he’s an omen, though?” Hongbin asked, perched on one of the kitchen chairs nearby, wringing a rag between his paws distractedly and visibly twitching whenever Yongseung’s movements caused another leaf or petal to flutter to the floor.

“Oh, well, that’s easy. Omens can see timelines. Or, rather, they can sense memories and emotions connected to physical objects.” Haebin noticed the blank stares she was receiving from everyone at this and shrugged. “Look, I don’t presume to know how that works, I’m just telling you what my friend told me, okay? And what she told me was that omens can see and feed off the memories and sentiment attached to objects.”

“So that would explain why he would want to keep Gyehyeon’s necklace so badly,” realized Soyee.

“Exactly. The more emotion surrounding an object, the longer it can sustain an omen. That’s why each one tends to have a collection of things that held some kind of significance to someone at some point, especially cute, sparkly, or pretty things, like clothes, jewelry, glass, toys, trash, or even rocks. My friend called the items she saved ‘baubles,’ but I’m not surprised this guy calls them ‘shinies.’ From what I was able to gather, omens actually see things with memories attached to them as having a kind of… magical sheen to them, I guess you could say.

“They’re able to sense magic in general to an extent, too, which is probably why he was able to tell you were a nekomata even when you were shifted, Hoyoung. My friend was actually the first person I met when I manifested in my kitchen the first time. She said something just felt… different about it that day, so she came to investigate, and that’s how we met. I hope she’s doing okay.” She looked briefly troubled for a moment, then smiled at everyone again. “Anyways! I can’t be sure without meeting him personally, but I’m willing to bet quite a bit that this Jaehwan person is an omen. Do what you will with that information.”

“So we just give him a bag of trash, he gives us the necklace,” Yeonho said, shrugging. “Easy-peasy, right?”

Haebin grimaced. “Not exact-”

“Hey!” Yongseung said, flinging up a hand and scattering a number of leaves and a few beetles everywhere. (Hongbin whimpered.) “You said omens like pretty things, right?”

“Flowers!” Xiening piped up, clearly following Yongseung’s train of thought. “We give flowers! A big, beautiful bouquet will surely make the crow monster very happy!”

“Exactly!” Yongseung beamed, reaching up over the edge of the table so Xiening could give him a high-five, sending more leaves fluttering to the ground. (Hongbin could no longer contain himself and hopped down from his chair to start frantically shoving the leaves into his mouth.) “I have a lot of blossoms right now; between those and Xiening’s flowers, I’m sure we could make something that he would like.”

“It’s a nice thought, you two,” Haebin said. “But we would have more of a chance offering Xiening’s vase to him than your flowers. Not that we would!” she added hastily as Xiening squeaked and hid behind Yongseung’s arm in alarm. “I doubt he would appreciate having to deal with an object that already has a consciousness of its own, but the point is, omens are drawn to things that last. The older something is, the more likely they’ll be attractive to their kind. Being shiny or sparkly wouldn’t hurt, either. So flowers are out of the question. I’d offer something from the kitchen, but there’s nothing here that wouldn’t be missed. I’m not really one for personal possessions myself, either, and I’m sure most of us here are the same way.”

All this talk of shiny things had gotten Hoyoung thinking about his candy wrapper again. On impulse, he excused himself from the room while the others discussed their options and pawed through his nest for the small square of foil. Carrying it back to the circle of monsters in his mouth, he set it down before him, tentatively hopeful. “Would… would this work?”

“It’s a good start!” Haebin said, giving him an encouraging thumbs up. “You’ll probably need to sweeten the deal with something else, though. I doubt it would be enough by itself, especially considering how precious Gyehyeon’s necklace seemed to be to him.”

  
The tentative bit of hope died out as soon as it had come, and Hoyoung’s ears drooped despondently. “I… I don’t have anything else.” Of course a paltry bit of metal foil wouldn’t be enough to buy back Gyehyeon’s necklace all by itself, what had he been thinking? “Sorry, it was a stupid idea, I’ll just-” A blue barrette with a lopsided, beaded pink and white star glued to one end dropped next to the wrapper with an almost inaudible thunk. Hoyoung looked up in surprise to see Nayoung crouched nearby in her human form, one less barrette in her hair than usual.

“It’s not much, but it should count for something,” she said, shifting back into her nekomata form. “Mina made it, back when she was first learning to do beadwork. She threw it away because she made some mistakes with the beading, but I liked it, so I salvaged it.”

“Here,” Soyee offered, fishing a small comb made from a transparent, glittery, pink plastic out of her thick, dark fur. “You can have this, too. I found it in the garbage before I came here. It’s always brought me luck.” She leaned over and delicately placed it in the pile along with the wrapper and barrette. As Hoyoung was trying to process this, Taekwoon returned from Hakyeon and Sanghyuk’s bedroom, a long, silver string held in his mouth.

Adding it to the small pile of objects, he said, “This was from Sanghyuk’s guitar. I took it after he replaced some of the strings a few years ago because,” He suddenly seemed a little bashful, “well, I wanted to play with it.”

While he was still speaking, Yeonho phased through the wall from outside. Hoyoung hadn’t even realized he was missing.

“Sorry I’m late!” the smaller baku said cheerfully. “I had to run and get this.” He held out a small, green crystal between two claws. “Oh, you have a pile going already, nice!”

“Your favorite rock?” Hoyoung asked in dismay as Yeonho deposited his treasure with the others. “But… Yeonho…” He looked helplessly at the rest of the gathered monsters. “Guys, you… I can’t-”

“Yes, you can,” Nayoung said firmly. “ _We_ owe Gyehyeon for saving your life, too, you know. So shut up and take them. And don’t cry, you big kitten.”

“’m not crying,” Hoyoung said stubbornly, as Taekwoon helpfully licked away the suspicious moisture from his eyes.

“So how about it, Haebin?” asked Yeonho, leaning back into Soyee’s side with a tired yawn. “Is that enough, you think?”

Haebin eyed the small collection of objects appraisingly before finally nodding. “I don’t see why not.”

“Oh, good.” With that, Yeonho promptly fell asleep again.

“I think that about does it for us,” Soyee said, gently hefting Yeonho’s smaller body in her long, thick, bearlike arms to carry him back to his closet. “Good luck, Hoyoung.”

The rest of the monsters also started to disperse, with Dongheon turning back into a bee and Yongseung exchanging farewells with Xiening before dissolving into his usual small shower of petals and leaves. (Hongbin muffled a scream in his rag before obsessively stuffing each and every bit of plant matter in his mouth at breakneck speed.) As Hoyoung mounded up the pile of small paraphernalia in preparation to take it back to his nest, a rag was suddenly shoved in his face. Upon closer inspection, it appeared to have once been some kind of dishtowel, with faded daisies printed all around the tattered border.

“Here,” Hongbin said gruffly through his last mouthful of vegetation. “You’re going to need something to carry all that in, since last I checked, your sweatpants didn’t have pockets. And before you say anything, yes, I’m sure, no, you don’t need to thank me.”

The moon rabbit hopped off to his broom closet, leaving a dumbfounded Hoyoung holding the rag in his paws.

* * *

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want someone to come with you?” Taekwoon asked worriedly as Hoyoung prepared to depart through the bedroom window that afternoon with his little bundle of donated odds and ends. “Just in case? If something goes wrong, I’d be right there.”

“I’m sure,” Hoyoung said firmly, testing the knot yet again with his teeth. “If Jaehwan feels I’m double-crossing him, then we could lose that necklace forever. I’ll be fine, hyung, don’t worry. I’ve lived on my own for years, I can take care of myself for a couple hours.”

Taekwoon didn’t appear completely convinced of this, but finally let Hoyoung go without further protest. Hoyoung started out carrying the small bundle in his mouth, and then shifted to his human form about halfway there when his mouth needed a break. He reached the overpass from the day before without incident, though his feet had become very sore indeed by the time he arrived. Just as he was admitting to himself that Soyee might have had a point about the whole shoe topic, he heard angry voices in the distance, and saw a scuffle taking place under the overpass. Without thinking twice, Hoyoung dove into a nearby patch of bushes, clutching the bundle he held in a white-knuckled grip.

“-come on, Youngjae, I thought we were cool.” Hoyoung instantly recognized that distant voice as Jaehwan’s, and peeked out from between the leaves to see the strange monster pinned by the throat against one of the overpass columns. Hoyoung’s breath caught as he glimpsed the man doing the pinning, and recognized him as one of the Matoki.

“What does the harbinger mean by that, Youngjae?” said the other man, who Hoyoung had never seen before. Even though his deep voice was deceptively quiet, it carried clearly to Hoyoung’s ears.

“Nothing, Yongguk-hyung,” snapped Youngjae. Turning back to Jaehwan, he tightened his grip around his throat, causing the taller monster to choke and grab futilely at his arm. “Listen, you overgrown jinx. We don’t need freaks like you on _our_ turf. If you’re not out of here by tonight, you _won’t_ like what happens. This is the last warning we’re giving you, got it?” Jaehwan’s airway was too constricted for him to reply verbally, but he made an okay sign with one hand and grinned as if he wasn’t currently being throttled within an inch of his life. “Good.”

With that, Youngjae let him go and delivered a punch to his cheek that sent him crumpling to the ground. Hoyoung winced.

“Let this be a lesson to you to keep your nose out from where it doesn’t belong,” Youngjae’s tall companion rumbled warningly. The two Matoki then turned to go, Youngjae spitefully knocking over Jaehwan’s loaded shopping cart as they passed. Hoyoung waited until they were completely out of sight before creeping out of the bush and over to where Jaewhan had scrambled to right the overturned shopping cart and gather up his scattered belongings. The other monster saw him coming and smiled tightly.

“Hey, little thief,” he said, wiping away a smudge of blood from his split lip. “Decided to show after all, did you? Apologies for the mess, my latest guests were rather rude.”

“I had a run-in with them a few days ago myself,” Hoyoung admitted. He picked up a pair of sunglasses that had fallen out of the cart and offered them to the other monster. “They seem… rather territorial.”

Jaewhan seemed to relax slightly at this and agreed readily, taking the sunglasses to set them into the disjointed pile next to him. “Right? Tempermental, too. They were fine with me staying here just last week, but now they suddenly think I’m bad luck for some reason. Me! The very idea.” Jaehwan sniffed disdainfully, rubbing gingerly at the purpling bruise on his cheek. “I’m a _good_ omen, thank you very much.”

Hoyoung tried not to show just how relieved he was at hearing this. So Haebin had been right after all. He tensed up again as Jaehwan’s eyes flicked to the small bundle Hoyoung held in one hand, lighting up in interest. “Hello, what do we have here?”

“Payment. For the necklace.”

“Well! Hand them over, then, let’s take a look.” Jaehwan eagerly made grabby hands at the bundle until Hoyoung obligingly opened it and laid out the five small items. Jaehwan’s eyes briefly flashed pale silvery blue as he gazed at the objects, picking up each and giving it careful consideration. He lingered especially long over the candy wrapper, turning the foil over and over in his long fingers before returning it to the pile. Finally, he nodded decisively and packed the items back up in the rag, turning to an anxious Hoyoung.

“They’ll do,” he said shortly, shoving the entire bundle in one of the many pockets sewn into his pants. “Six shinies seems like a fair trade to me. I’ll go get the necklace for you.” He transformed and flew off, leaving a confused but greatly relieved Hoyoung behind. What did he mean, six? There had only been five in the- ah. Well, hopefully, Hongbin didn’t want that rag back anytime soon.

Hoyoung’s musings were cut short by Jaehwan returning, a number of assorted jewelry, strings of beads, and a ring of keys held in his claws and beak. He dropped them in the pile of recovered items and then transformed in midair, landing in a half-crouch before Hoyoung and holding the puzzle piece necklace out to him with a flourish. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Thank you!” Hoyoung grabbed the necklace and immediately put it on for safekeeping, looking up at the taller monster gratefully. Oh, Gyehyeon would be so _happy_ , he could hardly wait to see the look on his face! “Thank you so much!”

Jaewhan gave a small, lopsided smile. “Sure, kid.” He then busied himself with bundling the rest of his possessions back into the cart. Hoyoung supposed he should probably get going as well, but…

“Where will you go?” he found himself asking instead.

“Wherever the wind takes me, I suppose,” Jaehwan shrugged, and then sighed. “It’s a pity, though. I liked this area. Places with memories that no one wants anymore are always the best. Plus, the humans that still stick around in places like this tend to appreciate a good omen or two. Oh well.” He sighed again, and started walking. “No use crying over spilled milk. See you around, little thief.”

“Wait!” Hoyoung exclaimed, running forward and grabbing the cart to stop it. At Jaehwan’s inquisitive look, he plowed forward, not giving himself any time to second guess what he was about to say. “What if… what if I could get you a place to stay where the Matoki wouldn’t find you?”

Jaehwan raised an eyebrow. “Oh? And where might that be? And what’s with this sudden altruistic streak?”

“My humans,” Hoyoung explained. “They… don’t have much money. Their house is super small, the roof leaks, their clothes have holes. But they… they’re so _kind_. Even though they don’t have any money to spare, they’re still planning on throwing the boy this belongs to a birthday party next week to make him feel wanted.” He tapped the necklace and continued. “They… they could use a good omen in their lives. If I show you someplace you can live where those monsters wouldn’t find you… could you… I don’t know, do something for them?”

“I think you’re overestimating my abilities a little, kid,” Jaehwan said, but the suspicion had left his eyes entirely, and he wore a smile that was markedly softer than any Hoyoung had seen on him thus far. “But sure, if you can deliver, I’ll see what I can do. Lead the way, little thief.”

* * *

Hoyoung’s feet were all but screaming at him by the time they’d walked all the way back to Jellyfish Cottage, but the pain was easy to push to the back of his mind as he led Jaehwan behind the apartment building and showed him the small shack and abandoned lot studded with trees. “Well?” he asked, twisting the hem of his shirt in his hands anxiously as he tried to gauge Jaehwan’s reaction. “Is it… okay?

The omen was staring intently at the shack, an unreadable expression on his face. His gaze flicked over to the front gate then back to the house again, briefly flashing a pale silvery blue like before. “Huh…”

“Is that a good ‘huh’ or a bad ‘huh’?” Hoyoung asked nervously.

“What?” Jaehwan shook himself and blinked. “Oh, nothing, sorry. That tree right there looks serviceable.” He pointed to the evergreen tree tethering one end of the clothesline next to the house. “Though I’ll need somewhere to stash my cart, too.”

“I thought of that,” Hoyoung said, tugging the cart to prompt Jaehwan to follow him to the rest of the yard behind the apartment building. Before he could tear his bare feet completely apart on the thistles hiding in the grass, he shifted back to his nekomata form to better avoid them, leading Jaewhan through the thick, overgrown lawn to the small shed in the back corner of the lot. He then shimmied up the tree to get to the hole in the roof, jumping down inside the toolshed to unlock its door.

“Alright, I admit it, I’m impressed,” Jaehwan stated as Hoyoung shifted again to help drag the cart through the door into the small space. “You really did think of every- ooooooh, pretty!” He reached out to poke at one of the long strands of colored glass hanging from the ceiling, eyes round with delight. He then noticed Hoyoung’s raised eyebrow and immediately withdrew his hands, raising them in a nonthreatening manner. “Just appreciating fine art, nothing more! I don’t mess with anyone’s shinies if they don’t mess with mine. Nothing will go missing, promise.”

“It better not,” Hoyoung said, folding his arms in what he hoped was a sufficiently stern fashion. Jaewhan stared at him in surprise, and then laughed uproariously.

“Well, I’ll be! The kitty cat has a backbone after all. I think we’ll get along just fine, little thief.” Jaewhan ruffled Hoyoung’s hair vigorously before whirling around and digging through a box on the lower rack of his shopping cart. “Oh, that reminds me… aha! Here.” He turned and thrust a pair of flip flops into Hoyoung’s hands. “You’re going to get tetanus going around barefoot like that in this neighborhood. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He stretched luxuriously and then transformed back into his crow form. “I have a new nest to build. Toodles!”

He waved a wing and flew out the hole in the ceiling, leaving Hoyoung to wonder just how in the world he was going to break the news that they had a brand new neighbor to the others. But first… Hoyoung carefully slipped the pair of sandals onto his feet, wriggled his toes a few times, and smiled.

* * *

As he expected, Taekwoon pounced on him the second Yongseung let him in the bedroom window and he stepped out into the main room of the shack, demanding Hoyoung give him a full report. The elder monster listened to Hoyoung’s explanation attentively, and, after hearing his reasoning for inviting an omen to live on the premises, even praised his foresight.

“You’re… really okay with it?” Hoyoung asked, taken aback by how relaxed Taekwoon seemed about the whole affair.

“Of course,” Taekwoon assured him, patting his head with a large paw. “Why wouldn’t I be? I know you wouldn’t bring someone here who meant harm to our humans. I would like to meet this Jaehwan later, though, just in-”

A loud tapping on one of the windows, along with a surprised shriek from Hongbin, who’d been busy drying the dishes from breakfast, drew the two nekomata’s attention to the kitchen. A large, iridescent crow was pecking on the front kitchen window with his beak. After getting everyone’s attention, he waved brightly at the assembled monsters in greeting, before almost losing his balance on the window box filled with herbs that he perched on.

“Oh no, you get off there this _instant_ , you buzzard!” Hongbin barked, hopping up on the washing machine to wave a dishrag at the omen, who just seemed captivated by the motion of the rag and the small, glowing rabbit on the verge of a conniption fit.

Taekwoon sighed, looking equal parts exasperated and amused. “No time like the present, I suppose. How about you introduce us, Hoyoung? Preferably before one or both of them breaks the window.”

* * *

After leaving the older monsters to hash out things like the logistics of the new living arrangements, Hoyoung went back into the bedroom. Shifting back to human, he placed the necklace on the floor slightly under the dresser, shifted again, and crawled under the bed to eagerly wait for someone to find it. He knew he wouldn’t have to wait long, since Mina, Minchan, and Kangmin should be home soon.

Sure enough, Kangmin eventually came in to the bedroom, smelling strongly of grass, dirt, and sweat, and dressed in his blue and white soccer uniform. As he rummaged through the dresser for a change of clothes, he finally spied the necklace, diving for it in delight.

“Hyung’s necklace!” he exclaimed, his face wreathed in smiles. Hoyoung was tempted to gobble down the sparkles filling the air around him, as he was starving from all the shifting he’d done that day, but he restrained himself. Later. Kangmin’s happy smile faded slightly, his brow furrowed in thought. “But… I could have _sworn_ we looked here already…”

He suddenly dropped to his knees and peered under the bed, making Hoyoung _immensely_ grateful he’d had the foresight to camouflage himself. “Was it you, monster?” Kangmin whispered into the darkness. “Did you find it for us?” His smile got even wider. “Thank you! I’ll give you another treat later, I promise.” He then leaped to his feet and raced from the room, yelling for Mina and leaving Hoyoung feeling fonder than he probably had any right to for a human.

* * *

Finally, the day of Gyehyeon’s birthday arrived. Minchan was distracting Gyehyeon in his room while the rest of the family bustled around hanging up decorations and getting ready for dinner. Taekwoon, Nayoung, and Hoyoung had already sequestered themselves away under the couch and watched the proceedings with great interest.

“I think that’s enough tape, Kangmin,” Hana said as she put the finishing touches on the meal while Mina squirreled a number of suspicious parcels away inside a cabinet.

“Are you sure?” Kangmin replied, doubtfully eyeing his side of the party banner, which was plastered in tape.

“Pretty sure, squirt,” Sanghyuk said wryly from the other side. Since Gyehyeon’s birthday fell on a weekend that year, he was able to attend the party instead of having to stay longer at school like he normally did for most of the week. He crossed the room and lifted Kangmin down from the chair he’d been using as a stepladder. “What do you think? Does it look good?” Kangmin looked around at the sparse flags and streamers they’d hung around the walls and light fixtures and nodded eagerly.

“Looks great, hyung, you really came through!” His face fell slightly. “What if Hakyeon-hyung can’t make it in time, though?”

“Did someone mention my name?” Hakyeon said, stepping through the front door.

“Hyung!” Kangmin ran to get his usual hug and kiss. “Hyung, you’re just in time! We’re almost about to- oh, look!” he said in a loud whisper, pointing across the room. “It’s the pretty crow again!” Everyone turned to see Jaehwan sitting on the windowsill outside the window above the kitchen sink, peering in to get a glimpse of the festivities. Upon realizing he had an audience, Jaehwan began to strut back and forth on the windowsill, preening shamelessly until Hana closed the curtain on him.

“Where did that thing even _come_ from?” she said over Jaehwan’s disappointed caws from the other side of the window. “I swear, if things start going missing from the clothesline…”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Hakyeon said, walking over to the table to deposit Kangmin in his chair. “Crows like that one are good luck, you know.”

“Really.” Hana didn’t look convinced.

“Yes, really. Remind me to tell you the legend of the Rainbow Crow sometime. Now, are we ready to eat?”

“Just about. Mina, would you-?”

“On it, unnie,” Mina said, running to fetch Minchan and Gyehyeon while everyone else seated themselves at the table.

Gyehyeon took one look at the decorations and beaming family around the table, and immediately tried to duck back into Minchan’s room, red all the way to the tips of his ears. Minchan and Mina prevented his escape, though, and gently herded him to the table, holding onto each of his arms as everyone wished him a happy birthday. Once he was seated in his usual spot between Kangmin and Mina, Hana set a large bowl of seaweed soup in front of him before dishing some up for everyone else.

“How is it, Gyehyeon?” she asked, setting the last bowl of soup down in front of Sanghyuk.

“ _Way_ better than the instant convenience store stuff they serve at the home, thank you, noona,” Gyehyeon said enthusiastically, slurping down soup as fast as he could bring his spoon from the bowl to his mouth. Small, fluffy, violet clouds of gratitude began to appear around him along with a few large, golden, joyful sparkles. He didn’t say much else for most of the meal unless directly spoken to, but his smile grew wider and wider until he was absolutely beaming by the time everyone finished eating. And then Minchan brought out a cupcake topped with black speckled white icing and covered with crushed cookies, with a yellow candle stuck on top, and everyone sung happy birthday while Gyehyeon looked like he wanted the floor to swallow him up, though the happiness still pouring off him told a slightly different story.

Gyehyeon insisted on giving a bite of his cupcake to everyone who would accept it, and after it was all eaten up, Mina brought out the three parcels she’d stashed away, setting them in front of Gyehyeon with a flourish. “For you!”

“For…” Gyehyeon seemed at a loss for words, looking around at everyone helplessly. “But…”

“No buts,” Hakyeon said firmly. “Consider it thanks for all you done for our Mina over the past few weeks.”

“Come on, hyung!” Kangmin urged, bouncing up and down in his seat. “Open them, open them!”

So Gyehyeon did. The first two presents he opened were a small, red racecar and a potted succulent with red-tipped dark green leaves, and Gyehyeon was appropriately appreciative of both of them, causing both Kangmin and Hakyeon to squirm happily in their seats. The last present, however, caused Gyehyeon to sit speechless in his chair for a good twenty seconds. There, nestled in the folds of tissue paper, lay a necklace with a familiar puzzle piece pendant and a small, beaded keychain charm in the shape of an orange fish.

“The keychain's from me,” Mina said helpfully. “I was thinking about making you a new necklace or maybe a bracelet, but then I thought that might be tacky, and we found your old one anyway, so I just made you a keychain so you could just put it wherever you wanted, and… um…”

She trailed off as Gyehyeon clipped the fish charm to the necklace chain to join the puzzle piece and looped it over his head. The air was so full of peach curlicues, golden sparkles, and the deep violet clouds that gratitude produced that Hoyoung could barely see the blinding smile on Gyehyeon’s face or the happy tears in his eyes as he choked out a heartfelt “thank you.” Kangmin immediately leaned over to hug him tightly around the middle, and for once, Gyehyeon didn’t protest, not even when Mina, then Minchan, then the oldest three joined in.

While watching the huddle of happy, content, laughing humans from their vantage point under the couch, Taekwoon nuzzled Hoyoung and whispered into his ear, “You did well, Hoyoungie. I’m very proud of you.”

Those nine, small words burrowed themselves deep into Hoyoung's heart, and a deep, quiet euphoria welled up inside him. He hadn't messed this up! The humans were happy, they had an omen watching over the house, and Gyehyeon had his necklace back, and most of all, Taekwoon was _proud_ of him! As he looked at the silver puzzle piece and sparkly orange fish nestled against each other on the chest of an orphan who’d finally allowed himself to accept the love of this little, unconventional family, the young monster leaned up against Taekwoon's side, purring softly, and thought he might finally be ready to let himself to do the same.

* * *

_And you see the things they never see_   
_All you wanted I could be_   
_Now you know me and I'm not afraid_   
_And I wanna tell you who I am_   
_Can you help me be a man_   
_They can't break me_   
_As long as I know who I am_

_And I want a moment to be real_   
_Wanna touch things I don't feel_   
_We want to hold on and feel I belong_   
_And how can they say I'll never change_   
_They're the ones that stay the same_   
_I'm the one now_   
_Cause I'm still here_

**_\- “I’m Still Here” by John Rzeznik_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaaand that’s a wrap! \o/ A great deal of thanks to everyone who’s been following this series since its inception. Hopefully it won’t take another 6 months for me to begin the final installment, but with the amount of WIPs I have atm, I make no promises. :P Plus, I can already tell it's going to be quite lengthy, so I figure I better make more headway into my other fics first, but hey! At least I have the world and characters established so I can finally tackle the original prompt that kickstarted this whole thing. >:D Yes, that’s right, these last two fics have just been the setup for the plot I originally wanted to write when I came up with this AU idea in the first place. “The tale grew in the telling,” as the saying goes. XD So, if you’ve been enjoying this series so far and would like to see me return to it sooner rather than later, please consider leaving a comment to tell me so. ;) In the meantime, feel free to check out the AU’s [tumblr tag](https://x-i-l-verify.tumblr.com/tagged/Things-That-Go-Bump-AU) for posts related to the characters and worldbuilding, including but not limited to character aesthetics and (hopefully) fanart. (And, if anyone wants to chat, my DMs are always open. ^^d)


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